


The Sins of Love

by FeatherBlack (jatty)



Series: Sins [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Broken Wings, Friendship/Love, Gen, Hurt!Crowley, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-05-16 22:22:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 28,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19327273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jatty/pseuds/FeatherBlack
Summary: Crowley goes missing for a decade and Aziraphale isn't sure whether or not he should be worried. That is, until Crowley crashes onto the floor of his shop in a state almost worse than death.





	1. A Decade of Silence

Aziraphale hadn’t seen Crowley in almost a decade. It wasn’t unusual for his friend to go on, er...unannounced sabbaticals from time to time, but something about his absence was… 

Well, if he were being truly honest, it was unsettling. And not for the usual reasons. Aziraphale remembered the century Crowley spent sleeping and wondered if it might be the case again—sometimes he got rather close to believing this theory. Perhaps his friend had just gotten tired after the whole Armageddon-That-Never-Quite-Happened.

But why wouldn’t he say _something?_ As it was, Aziraphale had bid his friend goodnight after dinner at an exquisite new Italian restaurant (he’d had the best cut of veal he’d ever eaten in his six-thousand years, followed by lemon tart for dessert), and never heard from Crowley again. Not even a phone call… Not even a “hey, angel, water my plants for me, would you?” 

Those very plants were now, or at least as of two years ago, dead and rotten. The flat remained untouched, as though Crowley had just vanished into thin air with enough money set aside to keep the property in his name.

It wasn’t _unusual,_ Aziraphale reminded himself, but he thought things would be different now. They were on their own side, or so Crowley had repeatedly told him. They no longer reported to Up-There or Down-There. Was Aziraphale a fool for believing that that meant they only reported to each other, not just their own selves? 

After the first few days Crowley was gone, Aziraphale made a note to ask him that very question. He felt slighted by the demon’s absence in a way he hadn’t before. He felt...insulted. Invalidated.

There were dictionaries and novels all around him full of descriptions and definitions for awful feelings and not one of them accurately described how terrible felt with each passing day. Not a one…

“Maybe underneath it all, you really are bad,” Aziraphale said into Crowley’s answering machine for the final time—five years into his absence. “Maybe I was a fool to think you could possibly have a compassionate bone in your body. To think I was naive enough to believe it when you told me I was your best friend. It’s all too obvious now that I’m nothing to you.” He had to swallow back tears—actual tears!—before he could go on, and by then he had run out of things to say. “Goodbye, Crowley.”

He tried to find distractions, but there wasn’t enough food or enough wine to keep his interest now. The world felt different now. He didn’t have the Almighty above or the Hell below to worry about. He had Adam Young to check in on and watch over, but even that held a certain twinge of pain now that his fellow Godfather was nowhere to be seen.

Aziraphale, for the first time (or at least the first significant amount of time) in his six thousand and some odd years, was lonely. Food no longer gave him comfort, nor did wine or a good scotch. He wanted neither tea nor cocoa. 

So, one night, the angel laid down to sleep and did so for months. When he awoke, he felt no better than he had before. He probably would’ve stayed in bed another century or two all the same if he hadn’t been alerted by a loud slam downstairs in his shop. It sounded as though an entire shelf had come crashing down and, broken heart be damned, Aziraphale couldn’t handle the thought of his books being damaged by some intruder or accident. 

He tossed the covers aside and no less than sprinted down the stairs, nearly slipping and falling to his...well, not exactly his death, but the sentiment remained the same. He was moaning anxiously as he burst through the doorway into his shop, scanning everywhere at once and really seeing nothing but a blur is his panic. 

Nothing seemed amiss, he realized. All his shelves were still standing. 

It was _Crowley_ who was not.

After ten years, there he was—flailing and reeling on Aziraphale’s floor. So many feelings hit the angel all at once, and he was ashamed of himself for treasuring the relief he felt the most. Crowley was back!

Crowley was injured.

In his panic, Aziraphale must not have heard the subsequent banging that came from his friend thrashing against the floor—must not have heard the panting and keening _whimpers_ of pain being torn from Crowley’s lips.

His wings… Oh, God Almighty, Crowley’s wings were shattered and one was still beating uselessly against the ground. The other… God Almighty, his other wing wasn’t even _attached_ anymore. It laid beneath him, bent at a right angle and facing the wrong way. Blood coated everything, soaking into the fibers of the carpet and getting spattered on everything within reach with every flick of Crowley’s black feathers. Half of Crowley’s face was covered in crimson, both his hands—which clawed outwards as if he were fighting off an adversary—were streaked as well. 

Aziraphale wanted to be sick, but swallowed it down, forcing himself to step forward despite his shock. He didn’t know the very first thing about what to do or what he could even say to help, but standing around doing nothing was certainly wrong. 

“Crowley?” His voice trembled and cracked as he knelt at his friend’s side. “Crowley, it’s me—Aziraphale. Can you hear me?”

All he got in response were more cries and then an inhuman, ghastly scream as he tried to place his hand on Crowley’s shoulder. 

“Crowley—Crowley, please. It’s just me! Let me help you, Crowley. Please, please!” Aziraphale didn’t realize he was crying until his voice warbled with it. 

The demon before him kept thrashing—striking his head on the ground as often as his broken wing—until it seemed all the fight fled his body at once. He collapsed against the carpet in the puddle of his own blood and let out a final, choked cry like an animal succumbing to a wire snare.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale tried again, frightened now that his friend had just died in front of him. Crowley was lying so still, so silently. 

Aziraphale moved closer examining the bleeding breaks in Crowley’s attached wing. It was as if some monster had pounded a hammer against the fragile bones and Aziraphale’s own wings ached in vicarious agony. Crowley’s fingernails were broken and cracked—two missing altogether as if they’d been torn off. He had a deep gash in his forehead, but otherwise his face seemed unscathed minus a few bruises. His black clothes were ripped to tatters, pale skin and blackened blood visible in the spaces between the fabric. 

“What have they done to you, Crowley?” Aziraphale asked, wiping his eyes on his sleeve quickly as he tried to gather his senses. He didn’t even know which “they” to blame for this. He wanted to say it had be Crowley’s own kind, that no angel could ever be so cruel, but wasn’t certain. He knew his fellow angels to be somewhat more sinister in their scheming than any demon.

Who didn’t matter right now, Aziraphale scolded himself. _Who_ could be dealt with later. Right now, Crowley was very well discorporating right in front of him and he needed to find a way to stop it. His mind was racing in circles, always coming back to the severed wing laying under Crowley’s back. 

Bleeding, he thought. Crowley was bleeding. He needed to stop it. 

Aziraphale grabbed Crowley’s left hand, the one missing two of its nails, and tried to ground his scattered mind—desperately trying to miracle away the damage that had been done, but doubting himself with every attempt. He was an angel, a being of good, and Crowley was a demon. His magic couldn’t work on him. No wholly anyway. The nails did not return, but the blood was vaporized and drifted away, leaving clean skin behind. Crowley, when he was better, should be able to bring back his nails and heal his scars.

The wing, however…

Aziraphale sobbed as he turned Crowley onto his side, tissue and thin slivers of bone were hanging down from the gash in his back where his left wing had been. They hadn’t cut it off—they’d ripped it from him like a cruel child might do to a fly. 

It took several tries to close the wound and it still leaked blood when Aziraphale was forced to give up. The shards of bone had fallen away and the hanging scraps of flesh had hardened into a thick, blackened scab. For hours, Aziraphale did all he could until he was left exhausted, laying with his head beside Crowley’s on the rug—having no strength left to move him. Every now and then, his friend would twitch or moan, giving the only indicators that he was still alive...and that he could still feel the pain. Aziraphale had tried to heal the broken wing as best he could, but the black feathers seemed to be, unfortunately, resistant to his magic. 

The sun rose and set as they lay on the floor of the shop, unmoving. Aziraphale would, every now and then, reach out to stroke Crowley’s hair—now long and hanging in matted curls. Crowley’s face twitched every time he did, but his eyes never opened.

Finally, Aziraphale found the resolve to move him. He came to kneel at Crowley’s side and slid an arm under his shoulders, just above his wing, and hooked his other arm around his knees. The very instant Crowley’s back left the floor, the demon’s eyes snapped open and he thrashed in Aziraphale’s arms until he crashed back onto the rug—onto his severed wing. 

“It’s okay! It’s okay, Crowley! It’s just me. It’s Aziraphale. I-I was trying to move you. I wanted to take you upstairs to rest.”

“You’re not real!” Crowley hissed, scrambling to get onto his feet but only making it into a defensive, crouched position as his missing wing set him off balance. 

“Crowley?” Aziraphale searched his friend’s face, seeing nothing but animalistic fear.

“Ssstay back! S-Ssstay back if you know what’s good for you!” Crowley screamed, trying to move and only succeeding in toppling over to his right. He looked around, then his yellow eyes landed on the floor—on the wing he was crouching on. 

Oh, God Almighty… He hadn’t realized it was missing yet. 

Crowley faltered backwards, both of his hands scrambling for his shoulder blades, grabbing at the hardened stump where his wing used to be.

“Wh-What is this? What happ… My—Is that… No… No, no! No!” Crowley let out another one of those demonic shrieks of pure Hell and anguish. “Damn you! Damn all of you! You bastards! You bastard...” His eyes were fixed on Aziraphale now, crying tears made of blood. 

“Crowley, I am so sorry. I tried to heal it… I did all I could, but my… My miracles don’t work on your demonic form. I’m sorry, Crowley. I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said, feeling in the deep pit of his heart that his apologies would never be enough. Sorry wouldn’t grow his wing back. Sorry wouldn’t undo a decade of torture. 

Crowley’s gaze dropped to the wing again and he shuffled backwards a bit more until he could reach out with a trembling hand and pick it up. The broken half dangled limply as Crowley lifted it.

“Why are you doing this?” Crowley asked, his voice frail. “I told you everything I know…”

“Crowley, it’s me. Really. What can I do to prove it?” Aziraphale asked, scooting closer only to have Crowley fall over in an attempt to get away. “Please, Crowley… Let me take you upstairs. You need to rest.”

“Stay back!” Crowley shouted. “You’ve done enough! You’ve had your fun, now let me go! Let me go or let me die—I don’t care anymore! Just leave me! _Leave me!”_

Not knowing what else to do, what he _could_ do, Aziraphale bowed his head and listened. He stood and excused himself, telling his friend that he would be upstairs if he needed him—or anything, if he needed anything at all.

The sun rose and set again before Aziraphale heard noise from downstairs. It took all of his willpower not to rush down to the shop when he heard Crowley attempt to stand only to collapse again and cry out in pain. Crowley wanted left alone and Aziraphale had to respect that… He needed to give his friend space to—to come to terms with what had happened.

A little while later, Aziraphale heard movement again and realized it was Crowley shuffling up the stairs. Aziraphale remained seated on the bed, his hands clenched tight into the blankets. When Crowley finally appeared, his form was still crumpled and damaged. He was carrying his severed wing along with him, folded to his chest. 

“Angel… I-I don’t feel very well, angel,” he said, eyes turned to the floor. 

“Come on. Lay down then,” Aziraphale said, getting off the bed slowly so as to not startle the demon. “I can put on some tea.”

“That would be… That—” Crowley tried to step forward into the room and very nearly fell to the floor, and would have had Aziraphale not run to catch him. He couldn’t balance without his left wing and seemed unwilling or incapable of retracting the right one, though Aziraphale was glad to see it was no longer the slightest bit broken. He had regrown his fingernails and healed the gashes on his forehead and limbs. 

“Lay down, dear. I’ll put the kettle on. Would you like something to eat?”

Crowley merely shook his head as he collapsed onto the bed, still holding onto his wing the way a child might cradle a beloved toy. Did he think he could reattach it? Did he just not know what to do with it?

Aziraphale put on the kettle and miracled away the blood left over in his shop as he waited for it to boil. Upstairs, Crowley let out an agonized scream and Aziraphale had the awful notion that he’d tried to reattach his wing and hurt himself. When he brought the cups of tea upstairs (with some biscuits on the side because he was at a loss for what else to do to keep himself occupied besides arrange the tidbits on a saucer), his bed was soaked in crimson blood and Crowley was sobbing quietly to himself, his wing now thrown to the floor in a jagged heap. 

“It’s your kind!” Crowley screamed at him as soon as he noticed Aziraphale was in the room. “It’s your kind that always does this—thinks of the cruelest, most wicked torments! There’s not a demon in Hell half as bad as you bloody angels! I hate the lot of you!”

The words felt like knives, but Aziraphale bit back the tears and swallowed the lump in his throat as he forced himself to approached the bed with the tea tray. He had to sidestep the severed wing and saw the look of terror on Crowley’s face when he still set his foot too close to the feathers. 

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said, trying to think of something to follow it up with and coming up short. “I’m… I’m sorry I don’t have any scotch,” he said, thinking out loud, as he sat down at the foot of his bed and set the tray between them. 

Crowley sniffed at him, then snatched one of the cups off the tray and brought it immediately to his lips—slurping it down. They drank in silence and Aziraphale, in his nervousness, ate every last biscuit off the tray even though he had no real appetite. He offered to make more tea, but Crowley shook his head and set his cup aside. He told Aziraphale he wanted to sleep and, as Aziraphale began to leave, asked him to hand him his wing. 

“It’s… It’s broken, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, not sure how else to broach the subject. It was severed. It was no longer a part of his body. It needed...disposed of. 

“I bloody know it’s broken! I was there! I was there when they ripped it off! I damn well know it’s broken—now give it here!”

Aziraphale let out a soft sigh and set the tea tray aside in order to carefully pick up the mess of blood and bone and black feathers. It was starting to smell… 

He delivered it into Crowley’s arms and then walked out of the room with the tea tray and not another word. He sat downstairs in his shop, unable to read. Unable to think of anything except that wing...the wing his own kind had ripped from Crowley’s back. 

Why would they have done such a thing? And who? Michael? Gabriel? He was enough of a pompous, arrogant, tosser to think of something so cruel as to torture Crowley for a decade and then cause him to fall to Earth a second time, without his wings to remind him of his former, heavenly Grace.

Days passed without any noise from the room above and Aziraphale wondered if his friend intended to sleep for another century—and wouldn’t blame him if he did. He would’ve left him in peace, too, if not for the smell. 

The wing was rotting. 

Aziraphale couldn’t stand it. He loved Crowley. He cared about him too much to let this destructive behavior go on unchecked.

He went upstairs with purpose, sickened when he went into his bedroom to find Crowley sleeping on top of the wing which had begun to grow mold...mold that had grown into Crowley’s hair in a vile, white film. His other wing, Aziraphale was relieved to note, had finally been tucked away where it was safe. 

Slowly, Aziraphale pulled the wing out from under Crowley’s body. Crowley didn’t even twitch, even after the last of the feathers caught under his arm and pulled free of the wing. Aziraphale couldn’t bring himself to snatch it away.

He left the one feather behind on the bed and took the rest of the wing downstairs to his shop, laying it delicately on the floor. He carefully wrote a letter detailing what he’d done and why for Crowley in the instance that he awoke, and laid it on his nightstand. With the note in place, he took a spare sheet from his closet and returned to the wing. He wrapped it gingerly, imagining it as its own being—regarding it the way Crowley must have—then departed the shop with it. He miracled himself to a field not too far outside of Soho, and then miracled for a shovel and began to dig. 

He cried as he dug, imagining Gabriel’s face with each stab of the shovel into the dirt. Angels were meant to be peaceful creatures. They were meant to love, not hate, but Aziraphale couldn’t help himself. Not anymore. He had been patient. He had been forgiving and loving and kind. He had done no (serious) harm to any living creature, and yet the other angels had taken his best friend and ripped the wing off his back. They broke the will of a demon as proud and resilient as Crowley and Aziraphale would never forgive them. He dared to say he wouldn’t even forgive the Almighty for what had been allowed to happen.

He felt hate for all the angels as he dug deeper and deeper into the earth. He felt hatred for himself for going a decade without suspecting foul play in Crowley’s disappearance. If he’d just realized, if he’d just thought to check, maybe Crowley would still be in one piece. Maybe he wouldn’t be needing to dig a six-foot-deep hole to bury the most beautiful black feathers he’d ever seen.

He hated himself for being angry with Crowley for vanishing, for thinking hurtful thoughts about him while he’d been imprisoned someplace Up-There. 

Hate, like love, was a very all-encompassing feeling—but it wasn’t enough to shield him from what was to come when Crowley awoke to find his wing gone.

“Angel! Angel—How could you!?” 

Aziraphale heard the screams from his seat at his desk, where he’d been holding his head in his still-muddy hands for over a week. 

“Aziraphale! How dare you!? How _could_ you!?” That last scream had bled off into a cry and Aziraphale forced himself onto his feet to face what he’d done. “You stole it!”

“Yes. Yes, Crowley, I took it,” Aziraphale said calmly. The mold was gone from Crowley’s hair, but the sheets were still soaked in blood. 

“It wasn’t yours to _take!_ It was mine! That wing is mine! Where did you put it? Where is it?” His yellow eyes didn’t look angry—they looked hurt. They hurt Aziraphale like knives.

“Crowley, it was _rotting._ It had grown mold—it was going to make you ill.”

“It wasn’t yours! I wasn’t meant to lose it twice!” Crowley choked. 

“I’m sorry… Please, believe me. You have no idea how sorry I am. But we both know you couldn’t put it back. There was no sense keeping it—”

“You stole it… Put it out with the Wednesday trash to get smashed up and dumped!”

“I buried it, Crowley! With my own hands!” Aziraphale said, showing his muddy palms and dirty clothes. “I dug the hole! I did it properly. I would _never_ throw a part of you into the garbage! Not even a single feather! I lov—I care too much to… No—No, Crowley, I _love_ you too much for that.”

Crowley’s face seemed stuck in a permanent grimace, but for the moment he’d stopped shouting. After a while, he quietly said, “Be careful, angel. If they find out you’re in love with the other side they’ll smash your wings and rip them off.”

“There is no other side, remember? Just our side.” He said it, not because he believed it, but because he couldn’t bear what Crowley had implied—that he’d been tortured because he loved him. What sort of angel tortured _anyone_ for feeling the power of the Almighty’s greatest gift?

“Well our side got my bloody wing torn off! Get it back!”

“I can’t do that, Crowley, and you know it. It was _rotting._ What were you going to do? Rot with it?”

“If I was, that’s my business,” Crowley hissed. 

“I won’t let you destroy yourself,” Aziraphale said, blinking back tears. “I’d sooner destroy Heaven and Earth than watch you die.”

Crowley stared at him, then collapsed back onto the mattress with his hands covering his eyes. 

“Crowley—”

“Do me a favor and stop talking, angel. There’s nothing more to say.” After a moment, he added, “Right now. There’s nothing more to say right now. Please… Leave me. I want to be alone.”

Aziraphale nodded and started to leave, then turned back to ask if his friend would like tea. It didn’t surprise him at all when Crowley told him no.

However long it took for Crowley to leave the bedroom, it felt to Aziraphale like another decade. He couldn’t even bear to look Crowley in the eye when the demon came to stand before him in his chair, an untouched book in his lap. He expected Crowley to tell him goodbye—or at the very least say he was leaving and thanks for nothing—but instead, the demon clicked his tongue nervously a few times and then sighed.

“I think… I might’ve gotten carried away,” he said. His voice was so meek, so rough with emotion that Aziraphale couldn’t stand it. “I might’ve said some things—”

“No. No, Crowley, I won’t stand for it. I won’t have you come to me and apologize. It’s all… It’s all forgiven. Please, don’t think of it again.”

Crowley stared at him, looking somewhat more like himself. Aziraphale wished he had his trademark sunglasses—just so he could pretend they were arguing about something else, something irrelevant and simple like blessing a bicycle. 

“I… I didn’t mean to make you feel responsible for my...” Crowley took in a shuddering breath. “Experiences. Up-There.”

“Was it true? What you said...about—”

“Oh. Yeah, yes. I suppose. It came up a time or ten,” Crowley said, looking anywhere except Aziraphale as he said it. 

“I’m sorry. If it would’ve helped, you could’ve renounced me. Say you hated me… Say you wished I were dead. I could live with that, Crowley, I really could. But I can’t stand being the reason they did this to you. I’ll never forgive them.”

“I couldn’t lie. Not about you, angel. You’re my best friend. Have been. For six-thousand years. Not gonna let...some broken wings come between that.” It hurt him just to think about it, Aziraphale noted. 

“I’d do anything to undo what was done, Crowley.”

“I know you would, angel. You’re too good for your own good. Probably the only true angel ever made. You’d have to be to love a demon like me.”

“Maybe that’s the ineffable plan,” Aziraphale offered. “Make an angel fall in love with a demon and punish them for it until they...”

“Confess?” Crowley suggested. 

“Perhaps not,” Aziraphale said, lowering his gaze to the book in his lap. “Being _in_ love is a human condition, after all. I’m an angel… I love everything. It’s only natural I would love you, too.”

“And I’m a demon,” Crowley said, his voice suddenly angry. “Not like you could fall _in_ love with me if you bloody tried.”

Aziraphale was still trying to think of something he could say to fix things when Crowley retreated back upstairs. He pitched a heavy sigh and glanced across the shop at the mirror on his desk, staring at his own grubby appearance.

“Shut your stupid mouth...and die already,” Aziraphale said to himself, dropping his gaze and retreating into his own sorrows. He’d mistaken Crowley’s trepidation for rejection, and now he’d rubbed proverbial holy water into Crowley’s wounds. 

He was still making up his mind on whether or not he wanted to report Up-There and give them all a piece of his mind when Crowley appeared before him a second time.

Aziraphale stood up this time, almost giving in to his impulse to hug the demon. When he moved, however, Crowley shrunk back as if in fear of attack. 

“I… I’m going to go home to my flat, angel,” he said, eyes downcast. 

“I could… I could take the bus with you,” Aziraphale suggested, horrified at the thought of Crowley being on his own.

“No, that’s alright. I want to be alone for a while. Sort some things out. I’ve got some...adjustments to get used to.” He sighed and expanded the one wing he had, almost falling over from the weight of it but managing to correct his balance just in time. “Does it look as stupid as it feels?” He asked, licking his lips nervously. 

“It doesn’t look stupid, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, heartbroken. “It looks like it hurts.”

“It does. Like Hell.” Crowley tried to laugh, but it sounded forced and must’ve embarrassed him because he immediately started for the door.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale called after him, chasing after him.

“Hn?” He scarcely looked over his shoulder, his hand on the doorknob.

“I-I do… I mean—What I meant to say was, I am.”

“Isn’t that your boss’s line?”

“In love with you, Crowley,” Aziraphale corrected, closing his eyes against the rush of self-loathing for how foolish he sounded. “I am… I have been for some time now. And I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, I’d be sorry if I was in love with a demon, too. It never leads to any good.”

And with that serving as his goodbye, Crowley left.

Aziraphale stared after him with a heavy heart that seemed to reside both, shattered, in his chest and whole in his throat. He was crying again, like a fool, and couldn’t stop. He had a terrible feeling he wouldn’t see Crowley again—that he’d have to go visit his wing's burial site in order to feel close to him as if he’d died. And perhaps part of him had while trapped Up-There.

“How could You?” He asked the air, pacing his bookshop. “How could You let such a thing happen? I mean… From the dawn of time, he’s only ever done… He’s only ever been good! He might perform a few misdeeds here and there—and the whole phone line thing—but he’d never drown an entire population! He’d never do half the nasty things You’ve done! He’d never rip off someone’s bloody wings!” Aziraphale shouted, only vaguely concerned that his questioning and judgment might cause him to fall. “Crowley would’ve made the greatest angel in Your entire fleet! And perhaps that’s why You cast him down. You didn’t want a good angel—You wanted a stupid one. One like me who doesn’t ask questions. Well, I’ll ask questions! Oh, I’ll ask so many questions You’ll regret making me, too!”

By the end of his ranting, which went on for quite some time, Aziraphale lost count of the number of times he’d blasphemed. It didn’t matter. Earth, life, it all felt meaningless now. 

“He stopped the bloody apocalypse! What demon would do that? And You let them rip off his wings… You let them...because he’s a demon capable of love. You punished him for feeling _love._ How _could_ You?”

Aziraphale, exhausted and empty, went upstairs to his room to find the sheets cleaned of all the blood. A single black feather laid on his pillow ripped a new tear in his heart. Somehow he knew that the feather meant Crowley would not be coming back. And why would he? Aziraphale was a source of pain now—a pain he would carry with him until he perished. 

That missing wing… 

“How could You tear off his wing? It’s all he had left from before his fall… You know as well as I do that he regrets it. Falling… He’s sorry and You tore off his wing. So much for Your ‘forgiveness.’” Aziraphale laid down on the bed and held the feather like a quill pen. “You know… I would give him both my wings if I could and make do without them. I love him.” He received no answer, but imagined what Crowley might say if he were in the room.

He’d say something negative now, but the old Crowley… He’d say something like “Why would I need both your wings? I’d look like some kind of freak. You just want me to look like a freak so no one takes me from you.”

Aziraphale chuckled to himself in an empty sort of way—the laugh of a man who knows his dreams are dashed. Even so, his fantasies gave him a semblance of comfort. Like now, when he closed his eyes, he imagined Crowley at home with his dried up and decayed plants. Crowley would shout up a storm at them, put the fear of Crowley into their corpses. 

Aziraphale could almost hear his voice. Almost…

There came a loud banging and Aziraphale’s eyes shot open. It was daytime again. He’d slept? For how long?

The pounding came again, followed by the shattering of glass.

Before Aziraphale could even sit up, he heard shouts and heavy footsteps slamming against his floors.

“Where are you, angel!?” That was Crowley, livid. “I know it was you! Aziraphale!”

Stomp, stomp, stomp.

Aziraphale was frozen, clutching his sheets to his chest as he stared at his bedroom doorway until Crowley appeared—his sunglasses back on his face, his hair cut, and his clothes replaced with ones not cut to ribbons.

“What the devil is the matter?” Aziraphale asked.

“What’s the matter?—What’s the _matter!?”_

Tell me he didn’t dig it up, Aziraphale thought. Tell me he didn’t dig up that wing and get angry that its rotten.

“Well? What is it? You can’t just break into my home—”

“Don’t you play dumb. I know it was you, angel. I know you were behind this!”

“Behind _what,_ you awful serpent?” Aziraphale called helplessly. 

“This!” Crowley shoved the door the rest of the way open and then opened his wings.

Wings!

He had two again—only one was black and the other a dazzling, pearl white.

“You made me look like a freak! All the other demons are going to make me a laughingstock!”

Aziraphale couldn’t help his dumb smile. The Almighty had heard.

Oh, God… The Almighty had heard. How much, exactly, had the Almighty heard?

“Don’t look so pleased!”

“Well, I told you that deep down—”

“Don’t you say it! Don’t you dare go and say I’m good. I’m not good! I’m bad—I’m wicked! I’m the most vile demon that ever graced the Earth!”

“Graced?”

“Don’t start!”

“White looks good on you,” Aziraphale said.

“It does not!”

“How did this come about?”

“That’s what I’m asking _you!_ I was tending my plants and then the next thing I know, my whole body is burning and this ugly thing is attached to me!”

“Maybe you ought to stop terrorizing those poor houseplants and the Almighty wouldn’t see fit to punish you with white wings,” Aziraphale offered. “Do you want some tea?”

Crowley was gaping at him as if with disgust, then shrugged with his entire body and said yes—yes, tea would be lovely—in a tone that suggested his need for tea was obvious. 

“No point in going home, really,” Crowley said over his second cup. “All the plants are dead. Nothing there for me except...memories. Of dead things.”

“You can stay with me if you’d like,” Aziraphale said without missing a beat. “There’s room.”

“Where?” Crowley asked, sprawling back in his seat and staring Aziraphale down through the black lenses of his glasses.

“Here. Everywhere. Oh, it’d be lovely. You could get new plants. We’ll put them over there.” Aziraphale pointed toward a corner by his desk and Crowley scoffed loudly.

“You can’t put them there, angel. There’s not enough light! Even I couldn’t scare them into growing in a place like that.”

“Okay,” Aziraphale said, smiling around the rim of his cup. Crowley was serious. He was considering it… He was agreeing. “Where do you suggest?”

“Over there. I’ll put them over there. I want to get succulents.”

“Succulents?”

“Yeah… You know… A bunch of them. Little ones. And maybe some little trees. Bon-sais,” he said, pronouncing the word as if it were alien to him. He was staring over at the window now, tilting his head back and forth with intent.

“I think,” Aziraphale said, admiring the angle of Crowley’s jaw, “that would be lovely.”


	2. A Decade of Screams

Crowley sank down into his throne, legs sprawled out as he held his head in one hand. He’d had something more on his mind than food when he’d offered to take Aziraphale to the new Italian restaurant _Il Ramo D’Ulivo,_ but the words never quite seemed to manifest on his tongue as they ate.

Well, while Aziraphale ate. Crowley drank wine—two bottles, actually. Maybe that was his problem. Hell, it had to be. He’d been a pathetic, nervous wreck when they were shown to their table (though he was proud to admit no one else would have noticed his anxiety), and had hastily ordered a bottle of wine before the host even finished pushing in Aziraphale’s seat. 

“Oo,” Aziraphale had cooed when he overheard the label of wine selected. “What are we celebrating?” He asked, chuckling as he fiddled with his empty water glass. 

Crowley had made some odd, non-commital noise close to the sound a trumpet might make if someone were blowing into it at the same time a military tank ran it over. “Do we need to be celebrating?” He ended up saying.

And kept repeating in his head with more and more self-loathing for the rest of the night.

Part of him wanted to take out his frustrations on his plants, but he didn’t even have the energy to get out of his seat. His head and heart were equally heavy and all Crowley wanted was to turn into a snake, curl up into the tightest spiral imaginable, and fall between the electrons in his floorboards.

Tonight was supposed to be the night—and, like everything else that was planned and good in his life, Crowley had fucked it up.

And what’s worse is Aziraphale was none the wiser! 

He tottered off into his shop with a polite wave goodnight and Crowley had stared after him from inside the Bentley, clenching his teeth together when all he wanted was to part them. Part them and say “Angel, it’s been six-thousand years. Don’t you want more than just... _this?”_

But he couldn’t say it. He couldn’t ask. A thousand different Aziraphales with a thousand different tones of voice answered the question in his mind. Most of them seemed shocked. Most of them said no. Most of them asked what in God’s name did he mean by that?

If he couldn’t say it tonight, he could never say it at all, Crowley decided as he drove home with still-clenched teeth that had grown into fangs. His skin had started to scale over, his tongue had forked… It was taking all of his concentration not to cry like a fool.

He should go to sleep, Crowley thought. He should go to bed for a day or two and forget the whole thing ever happened. Aziraphale would be none the wiser and Crowley could at least continue seeing him as friends rather than spend the rest of his immortality wandering the Earth alone in rejection.

Crowley lost track of how long he’d sat at his desk in the silence, but it was at least an hour or two later that he heard a loud knock at his door. He turned his head back to look at it, alarm bells going off in his aching head. It was too late for any deliveries or visits from the landlord…

Thinking it might be the doorman coming to tell him to move his Bentley again, Crowley shook his hand dismissively at the door and turned around. 

That should wipe the doorman’s mind and make him go deliver his warnings to someone else…

However, as soon as he was facing forward again, the knock came again—a strong, heavy pounding that would’ve made Crowley’s heart stop in his chest. If he had one.

Carefully, he stood up from his throne and stepped over to the door silently, his senses on high alert. There was a distinct shadow of feet outside in the hallway, but when he leaned in to peer through the peephole, there was no one.

That was definitely not good…

Crowley backed up a step, only to feel his back pressing into something warm and solid that definitely hadn’t been there a moment before. He whipped around, but not before something immensely hot—like a curtain made of pure fire—was tossed over his shoulders. His knees gave out, sending him to the floor in a crumpled pile of pain. He tried clawing at the fabric to get it off of him, but small white flames appeared on his skin the very instant it made contact with his bare flesh.

It was a pellegrina, Crowley realized as he stared down at his body in horror. A cloak worn by holy preists. And standing behind him had been three angels he’d never hoped to see again—especially not so soon. Desperately, he tried to shrug and shake the garment off of him, but whenever it would even begin to slip, one of the angels would straighten it and push it higher and higher until it was scorching the back of his neck.

“What do you want!?” Crowley roared at them, trying to channel as much rage as he could so the scream would sound like anything other than the cry of pain that it was.

“I’m afraid we need to go on a little trip, Crowley,” Gabriel said, his voice holding a sickeningly calm, fake sympathy. 

“Don’t worry. You won’t burn to death if you’re a good little demon and do as you’re told,” Michael tacked on. 

“And if you insist on fighting, we can show you the arrangement we have for your little boyfriend,” Uriel said, her lips holding back a smile that made Crowley’s insides start to burn.

“Why bring him into this?” Crowley hissed as Gabriel and Micheal hoisted him onto his feet by his shoulders. 

“I think you know why,” Gabriel said, in good humor. 

“Just do as you’re told, demon, and we’ll go easy on the both of you. How about that?” Uriel added.

Crowley was still struggling to think of a comeback (or a threat, or even a coherent thought as his body burned with a thousand tiny flames) when his flat snapped away and he was left on his knees in a room of pure, blinding, white light.

The floor burned as badly the pellegrina which was mercifully yanked off his shoulders. Crowley tried to get onto his feet, but was immediately shoved off balance by Uriel. His cheek smacked into the consecrated ground and left him feeling as if he’d been struck with an aluminum baseball bat that had been left in a deep fryer. 

He very nearly lost control of himself and screamed. 

“We have some questions we’d like you to answer, demon. And you’re going to answer them all. And truthfully,” Michael said, a sneer in her voice.

“Can you hurry up and ask? I’ve still got to water my plants before morning.”

“I have a feeling he’s not going to be nearly as cooperative as he’s pretending,” Uriel said, her voice booming and forceful. There was a threat behind it that Crowley was desperately afraid he was being led straight into, despite doing no misdeeds himself. 

“You know… I believe you’re right. Let’s just get this over with,” Gabriel said, miracling a clipboard out of thin air and jotting something down. “Crowley, you have been accused of fraternization and the temptation of a celestial being—resulting in a Fall from Grace.”

“What?” Crowley couldn’t keep the word from passing his lips. For a moment, he didn’t even feel the agony of the consecrated ground bringing his blood to a boil. Fraternization? Temptation resulting in a Fall from Grace? All he’d ever tempted Aziraphale with was food! That was hardly worthy of a Fall!

No, no… This couldn’t be happening. He’d been wining and dining Aziraphale since the beginning of time. Why was it just now an issue? What was Aziraphale going to think when he heard? He prided himself on his angelic status—he loved his role. Falling would…

Memories of fire and the reek of sulfur tormented Crowley’s brain. The sensation of endless falling, melting skin, and charring feathers overwhelming him until he started to gag and retch. 

Aziraphale was too _comfortable_ to withstand that. His years on Earth had made him delicate and Falling would tear him apart—in every way possible.

“Aziraphale… He’s not...” Crowley tried to think of something to say, really tried, but his brain was a mixture of horror, bad memories, and pain. No words came. He just wanted to vomit. He just wanted to _cry._ “I get him to eat the food of humans and you cast him downward? It’s you people who are wicked,” Crowley moaned, trying to get to his feet only to falter when the added pressure seemed to turn up the heat by a hundred degrees. 

“We have reason to believe you’ve tempted him far more than that, demon,” Michael said before passing a strange, sidelong glance to her vicious friends. “And we’re not going to end this meeting until you tell us what we need to know.”

“Aziraphale is worth a million of you monsters,” Crowley seethed. 

“Why? Because he loves human culture so much he’s decided to forsake his celestial duties and live amongst them?” Gabriel asked, tilting his head in condescension.

“He loves everything—isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? You’re _angels_ for...for Someone’s sake,” Crowley muttered. 

“Your misunderstanding of the role of angels is already evident. You don’t need to make yourself sound any stupider,” Gabriel said. 

“It’s you who don’t understand,” Crowley said, trying to stand again in order to at least be eye-level with the angels.

“Considering you Fell pretty early on in your existence, I would say we have a better understanding than you on...oh, _everything_ about being an angel. But we’re not here to argue about your faults and idiocy, Crowley. We’re here for Aziraphale.”

“I’m not telling you anything about him,” Crowley hissed. “Do what you like to me.”

It was hard to look or even sound intimidating when he had to keep shifting his weight back and forth.

“I told you he wouldn’t talk,” Michael said, smiling inappropriately. 

“Well, if he doesn’t have anything for us, it’s time for the second half of the trial,” Uriel said. She was sneering too, in her own straight-faced way. 

Crowley felt his anxieties climb even higher. He couldn’t escape. He couldn’t fight them—he could barely even stand up. The room they’d brought him into was a cell with no doors or windows, just white walls and a white floor and—oh… Oh, Satan, no…

There was a bathtub in the far corner. It was a white, rectangular basin that had blended in the with the wall from where he’d been kneeling but was ominously apparent now. 

He was staring at the tub, the faint glisten of water nearing the rim, as the angels spoke to him. He couldn’t hear them, couldn’t understand them… His eyes were fixed on the tub full of holy water. 

He should’ve known. He should’ve accounted for this. He’d told Aziraphale that someday their respective sides would come after them, but he hadn’t expected it so soon or abruptly. 

“Answer!” Gabriel boomed.

“What do you want me to say!?” Crowley shouted back. 

“Confess the sins of Aziraphale or prepare to go face-first into that tub!” 

“I’m not telling you shit,” Crowley hissed. 

“Suit yourself,” Uriel and Michael said in unison. Before Crowley could even react, they each had him by an arm and had begun yanking him toward the water. 

He fought them, digging in his heels and thrashing, but nothing worked. Gabriel was smiling at him pleasantly, standing now beside the tub with his hands clasped behind his back. 

That snake, Crowley thought—then became. 

With a loud hiss, he collapsed onto the floor in a tight coil. The floor burned him ten times worse in this form, but it got him out of their reach. He bolted to the wall and slid up it, seeking desperately for some hidden door despite the blinding pain. When an angel got too close, he would lunge for them—baring his fangs and occasionally spitting venom that wouldn’t kill but would certainly burn as much as the consecrated ground.

For a moment, he had them on the ropes. He had a brief time to imagine that he might outsmart them just yet. Then, as he was tracing quickly along the edge of the room, he heard a loud slam and was immediately faced with a searing pain so bad he had no choice but to change back to his human form. When he moved his hands from his face, he saw the bloodied, severed tip of his serpent’s tail laying on the floor while Uriel brandished a sword. 

“What the hell is wrong with you!?” He roared, his voice breaking with pain. 

“You chose this, Crowley,” Michael said, clicking her tongue. “You could’ve behaved and got in the bath, but you decided to make a mess of things. That was _your_ decision. See? Isn’t the free will you Fell for wonderful?”

Crowley’s only reaction was to hiss at them, his body burning and now riveted with shocks of pain from a tail this body didn’t even have.

“Get him in the tub,” Gabriel said, in an uncharacteristically cold tone of voice—like this wasn’t fun for him anymore. 

Uriel and Michael grabbed for him again and Crowley’s attempts to shove them away did no good. 

“Confess to his sins, or in you go,” Michael said in that same, patronizing tone.

“What good does it do to have _me_ confess? Ask Aziraphale!” Crowley screamed, panic starting to settle in as the tub drew nearer and nearer.

“Would you prefer that? We could arrange to have him here. It might work better. He could watch us torture you until he confesses.”

“He has no sins to confess! He hasn’t done anything!” Crowley yelled.

“Is that so?”Gabriel asked.

The tub was merely centimeters away and Crowley’s mind was plagued with flashbacks of what holy water had done to Ligur when a cup of it had splashed on him. He couldn’t imagine what a full tub would do. 

“But didn’t you two have a nice, _romantic_ dinner tonight?” Michael asked.

“You call that romantic!?” Crowley called, his voice breaking as he jerked backwards. They had him pinned in front of the tub now. 

“Two bottles of expensive wine,” Michael said, in a cooing tone as if she were speaking to a toddler.

“And you listened to him rave about the works of Shakespeare for an hour,” Uriel added.

“You paid the check didn’t you?” Gabriel said.

“What’s that got to do with anything? We buy each other food all the time. It’s—It’s a human custom among friends!”

“Are you in love with Aziraphale, demon?” Uriel asked.

“What?” Crowley choked, his eyes still on the water. 

“You are, aren’t you? You two are together, in the most obscene transgression from the Almighty,” Michael whispered into his ear, her lips so close they almost grazed him.

“You chose a male form when you Fell—and now you choose to tempt another of the same sex… A demon and an angel. What a disgusting, insulting arrangement.”

“We’re just friends!” Crowley screamed.

It hadn’t been a date. He wasn’t about to let Aziraphale Fall because these monsters in Heaven thought it had been. If only they could’ve seen the things he did—felt what he did… If they knew Aziraphale at all, they would know he’d never consider anyone except his books as a life partner. And if he had to, Crowley would be the last resort. They were friends. _Just_ friends.

“But you want more than that, don’t you?” Gabriel asked. 

“No,” Crowley lied.

Suddenly, his face was millimeters from the surface of the water. One of the angel’s hands was on the back of his head—forcing it closer and closer.

“Don’t lie to me, demon,” Gabriel said, like a disappointed father.

“So he’s friends with a demon! What does it matter? He’s still an angel. He still does good deeds and stops mine. He does what you ask him to. If you told him to leave me, he would!” Crowley shouted, rambling at this point with the threat of holy water growing steadily closer. 

“Leave you? But I thought you two weren’t together?” Michael sneered. 

“We’re just friends! It’s all we’ve ever been! He doesn’t feel the same!” Crowley felt sick the instant the words escaped his mouth. The surface of the holy water rippled under the force of his breath. 

“Doesn’t feel the _same?_ Do you love him, demon?” Gabriel asked again.

When Crowley chose not to answer, his body was shoved forward—his gut slamming into the rim of the tub and his face instantly crashing through the surface. 

He screamed before he even realized what was happening. The hands on him disappeared and he flung himself backwards, hardly realizing that the only pain he felt was in his sinuses from the rush of water that had gone up his nose. 

It took several seconds to realize the angels were laughing at him—that the water had been just that and nothing holy. 

Crowley was sitting on the floor, his palms and feet and thighs burning from the consecrated ground. No melting flesh, no boiling embers appearing under his skin.

“Oh, Gabriel… I think we went too far,” Michael said, clicking her tongue again. “It looks like the poor baby is crying.”

And she was right. When Crowley lifted his hands to wipe the water off his face, his palms were smeared with the blood that served as his tears. 

“Are you going to confess now, Crowley, or should we try something else?” Gabriel asked, coming to stoop in front of him. 

“Just save yourself the time and kill me, because I’m not telling you anything about him,” Crowley hissed, sounding anything but intimidating.

“Now, now… Where would the fun be in that? We’re not going to _kill_ you, Crowley. But that doesn’t mean we won’t make you feel like it...hope for it.” Gabriel was smiling at him, an evil smile, and the next thing Crowley knew, he was being hoisted up by his shoulders again. “Six-thousand years is a long time to walk the Earth, isn’t it?”

“What’s it to you?” Crowley moaned, trying to pull free of the angels and still unable. He thought to try the snake trick again, but feared how much else of him they would hack off before he gave up.

“It’s a long time, is all… A long time between now and when you...Fell. You probably can’t even remember it, can you? The darkness, the rushing, boiling wind… Having your wings set alight. Finally smashing down into the stinking pit of Hell. You probably can’t remember that at all, can you?” Gabriel asked, positively beaming with delight as Crowley, unwittingly, leaked larger drops of blood from his stinging eyes. “That’s okay… We have a way to remind you. I think you’re going to love it.”

The next thing Crowley knew, the walls of the room felt as if they were closing in on him. The tub was gone and the white walls were turning black. Then he was alone, left shuffling around in the narrowing space until the very floor dropped out from under him. He tried to open his wings on instinct, hoping to catch himself and stop the fall.

He hadn’t meant to!

He hadn’t meant to Fall!

He could smell the char, the sulfur, the heat of flames all around. The pain was worse than the consecrated ground. This pain ripped through him from within as he tumbled steadily downward—his wings beating useless against the rush of brutal air. He reached out, clawing at the air—clawing at the vast nothingness that somehow wrenched his nails away—while his wings thrashed against the current. He could see the feathers burning. He could see the white flames scorching his skin, eating through it. 

His wings beat harder and harder. 

He tried to scream but no sound came out. He tried to call for Aziraphale, but suddenly couldn’t remember his name. He couldn’t remember anything—not even his own name. 

( ) ( ) ( )

For Crowley, the Fall lasted an eternity. For Gabriel and the angels, it lasted a few good hours. For Aziraphale, who was at that moment leaving a heart wrenching voicemail, it lasted five years. 

Crowley no longer had a grasp on who he had been before. He knew only that every inch of him hurt and that he was left in a shivering heap on the floor, crying blood shamelessly as his captors stepped in through an unseen door.

“Are you ready to talk now, Crowley?” Gabriel asked.

It took Crowley a long time to realize he was being spoken to, and that he knew who the individual was. 

That was right… He hadn’t been Falling. Not really. That had been many years ago—many lifetimes ago. 

“I don’t think he feels very well,” Michael cooed. 

“We should let him see his visitor,” Gabriel said, kneeling down in front of Crowley. “Oh dear… You’re a mess.”

“Get away from me,” Crowley hissed, clawing his way backwards when Gabriel reached for his face.

“What did you do to get yourself in such a state?”

“Stay away from me!” Crowley shouted, pain exploding up and down his spine as Gabriel reached out and snatched the arch of his wing.

“They’re broken, Crowley… Did you break your wings during the Fall?” Gabriel was smiling at him still as he suddenly clenched his fist around the already shattered bone.

Crowley couldn’t help but scream—the noise sounding anything but human as he thrashed under Gabriel’s relentless grip. It broke the bone further until his wing was hanging loosely at its curve, forming a right angle. In his agony, Crowley found himself clawing at his own skin—desperate for anything to distract from the white-hot torture his wing had endured. 

“Let’s let him have his visitor. I’m sure that’ll cheer him up,” Michael said. 

Crowley lowered his head onto the ground, knowing he had to look every bit as meek and powerless as he felt. The surface scorched his forehead, but he didn’t care. His entire existence in this place was nothing but pain and he was starting to get used to the horror of the consecrated ground. He probably would’ve stayed that way too if not for the soft voice that called his name next.

“Crowley? Good Lord… Crowley!” Aziraphale.

Crowley lifted his head, eyes leaking more blood as he stared at Aziraphale’s expression of disgust and horror.

“What happened to you? Are you alright?” He asked, kneeling before Crowley and reaching out to touch his shoulder. 

Crowley couldn’t help but to lean into the touch, relief flooding him as he stared wordlessly at his friend. 

“What happened, Crowley?” Aziraphale asked again.

“I… I Fell,” he stammered, blinking hard and releasing even thicker drops of blood. It was making it hard to see. 

“Just now?” 

“I-I think so...” Crowley nuzzled his cheek against Aziraphale’s palm as the angel moved to wipe away the streak of blood. 

“They called me here for a meeting of some kind. I didn’t realize they had you.”

“Don’t tell them anything. I haven’t,” Crowley warned. 

“Don’t tell them anything? Anything about what?” Aziraphale took his hand away so abruptly that Crowley almost fell over—trying to follow the contact blindly. 

“Exactly,” Crowley whispered, trying to move into a sitting position only to have his shattered wings scream in protest. He wound up on his hands and knees, moaning in pure agony as his nearly severed chunk of wing swung back and forth by a thin sliver of skin. 

“Can I get you something? Anything at all? Maybe some tea?” Aziraphale asked.

“They won’t let you give me anything, angel,” Crowley whimpered. 

“Angel… You’ve always called me that,” Aziraphale said, his tone so gentle and soft Crowley wished he could climb into it and go to sleep. 

“It’s what you are,” Crowley said, staring at his friend’s kind face. He never thought he’d see him again and now he was taking the chance to relearn all the lines and creases of his face. He’d looked at him before, of course, when he was planning for the apocalypse—and again with even more attention after Aziraphale was back in his body and not dead—but now he regarded him with reverence. This probably was the last time he’d see him. “An angel… My angel,” he whispered, trying to reach for Aziraphale’s hand, only to have a cup of tea manifest in it. 

“Your angel?” Aziraphale asked, smiling at him nervously. Crowley was haunted by his friend’s words—“You move too fast for me, Crowley.” Six-thousand years of unspoken yearning was too fast. That only meant one thing. One awful, heartbreaking thing.

“The only one worth talking to,” Crowley choked, shifting his weight in an attempt to abate the pain. “The only one I’d call friend, at any rate,” he added when Aziraphale’s face started to droop. 

Now why was he sad? Crowley wondered.

“Drink, Crowley. It’ll give you back your strength.” Aziraphale was looking at him with so much remorse and sympathy. He knew it, too. He knew this was the last time he’d be seeing Crowley.

Crowley brought the cup to his lips, and took a small sip.

Immediately, he realized something was wrong. The cup fell from his hand and shattered. The drops of tea which spattered his knees burned like acid. His throat immediately clenched and spasmed until he coughed, chunks of blood coming up with each hack.

Holy water. Aziraphale had given him tea laced with holy water!

Crowley shot his head upwards, wanting to ask Aziraphale why. Was this mercy? Was this his attempt at saving him from further torture the only way he thought possible? 

Only he was no longer staring at Aziraphale. It was Gabriel, sneering at him. 

“I thought we’d get you with that one, but you’re tougher than I thought. I give you props for that.” Gabriel stood up and Crowley watched him with bleeding eyes, still choking on his own boiling flesh. “Don’t worry. It’s not enough to kill you. Where would the fun be in that?” He laughed a jolly, remorseless laugh as Crowley ached and cried in front of him. “You know what you have to do, demon. Just confess and all of this stops. We’ll even give you some hell fire to cure that nasty burn.

Crowley could only cough at him, hacking blood onto Gabriel’s suit.

“What’s that? Oh… I don’t suppose you can talk now, can you? Well… That’s a shame. I guess we’ll be back in a few days when you’re...feeling better?” He was smiling again and Crowley had developed a sort of primal fear of that smile. 

He didn’t have long to dwell on it, though. Gabriel vanished and the walls turned black. 

Crowley was falling again—plummeting toward the end of a bottomless pit. The fire consumed him, corroded him, then left him crashing into the ground again—snapping his already badly damaged wing right at the base. 

Crowley couldn’t handle anymore. He sobbed and curled in on himself on the searing-hot floor, his wings laying limp and in tatters behind him. 

When the angels returned, this time they had whips which shimmered with holy flames. He stared at them wordlessly, panting through his agony.

“Just tell me what you want,” he moaned.

“Admit you and Aziraphale are involved and we’ll let you go,” Gabriel said, matter-of-factly. “Duh.”

“It would be a lie.. He doesn’t feel the same. We’re just friends. He says...I move to fast.”

“I don’t buy it, demon,” Uriel said, punctuating her sentence with the hiss of the divine whip as it cut through the air and slashed across his shoulder. It burnt through his clothes and cut deep into his flesh, sending a spatter of blood across the floor. 

“Try again,” Gabriel said.

“There’s nothing to confess!” Crowley cried out, receiving another lash across his legs this time. He couldn’t even roll over to escape the blows—afraid to take a strike to his wings. They already felt as if they were on fire with a thousand cracks in his bones. So many of his feathers lay scattered around him on the floor. 

“Are you in love with Aziraphale?” Gabriel asked.

“What does it matter!?” 

It was Michael who brought down the whip this time, slashing right across Crowley’s forehead, above his eye. The blood gushed down, running into his eyes and blinding him. He didn’t want left in the dark with them—he didn’t want to be rendered helpless and unable to see what was happening next.

“Do you love him, demon?”

“Yes! Fine, yes! I do! Please _stop!”_

“And he loves you?” 

“No!” Another blow. “I-I don’t know! I don’t know what he feels!”

“Maybe we should ask him ourselves,” one of the angels said—it no longer mattered to him which.

“Leave him out of this,” Crowley moaned. It felt as if all three angels struck him at once. “Stop! He hasn’t done anything! All he’s ever let me tempt him with is dinner. Sometimes we have dinner. That’s no excuse to make him Fall.”

“We’re not buying it, demon. Confess.” They all struck him again and Crowley lurched onto his back, screaming as he broke his already dangling wing further.

He really couldn’t take much more. Whatever grace he’d had, whatever dignity or pride or sense of self, it had all been burned away leaving a shell in its place. A shell made of pure agony and Hell. 

“He’s worth a thousand of you,” Crowley wept. “He’s worth so much more than any of you, and your God is a fool for not recognizing it. Do You hear me!? You’re a fool! You’re going to cast down Your best angel on the word of these monsters! There’s no demon in Hell as cruel as them!”

Each word was met with blows. The whips tore though his skin until he felt slivers of it begin to slough off. 

“We can do this for eternity, demon. No one is listening to you. The Almighty wouldn’t waste a second on you,” Gabriel sneered. “Now, tell us everything that happened the romantic night Aziraphale stayed at your place, hm? His shop burnt down… You were so eager to take him home with you. Tell me, did you feel the sin of lust? Did he succumb to your temptations then?”

“Fuck you,” Crowley whimpered, rolling onto his side again and burying his face in his arms to protect it from the whips he heard coming. 

“Answer the question.”

“He’s not like that!”

More lashes.

“I slept on the floor! He was in my bed and I slept on the floor! What do you want me to say!? I’m a coward! I’m pathetic! I couldn’t tell him how I felt! He doesn’t even know! You monsters… You bastards,” he moaned, curling in on himself. He wanted to turn serpent but knew they wouldn’t hesitate to damage that form just as badly. In fact, he was positive they would savor the opportunity.

He expected the whips to come raining down on him again, but instead felt a cold hand grab the back of his neck and force him to roll onto his stomach. 

So they wanted to hit his wings… They wanted to annihilate them.

Crowley felt an icy sense of a defeat soak into him. What could he do? He had nothing to confess and he wouldn’t lie and put Aziraphale in danger…

Assuming this wasn’t all for fun and he hadn’t Fallen already.

“God, please, no...” He whispered, feeling something both cold and warm begin radiating inside his body.

“One last chance, demon,” Gabriel said, his hand tightening around the broken base of Crowley’s wing. “Just tell us he fucked you, and all of this stops.”

“God,” he pleaded, “he wouldn’t do that. Aziraphale is pure. He likes tea and books and—agh!” His words broke off into another demonic scream, his wing being steadily pulled backwards as Gabriel pinned his head. He felt the bone snap—felt his flesh ripping. “Please, no! Stop! He didn’t do anything! He loves being an angel—he wouldn’t risk it for me! Stop—Stop!”

He shrieked again, feeling every single nerve stretch and rip until he was left thrashing against the ground with his own wing thrown on the ground in front of him. It didn’t register. All he knew was that everything hurt and something had fallen by his head.

“Tell us what we want to hear, demon, and we’ll stop.” 

Crowley felt the hand return to his other wing, already starting to yank.

“Aziraphale is innocent...” He gasped, shock finally taking him. He felt nothing but warmth—a comfortable warmth. “Please… God, please. He’s innocent.”

“We don’t have time for your lies, demon.” They might have lashed him with the whips again. He heard them, but felt nothing. He formed words, but wasn’t sure if they ever actually came out.

“He doesn’t love me… He can’t Fall because of me. You can’t make him Fall because of me.” He couldn’t feel his body at all now—just felt the sensation of being dropped. He was falling, only this time the room stayed white. “I’ll Fall… I’ll take the Fall for him. It’s my fault. Everything is my fault. I love him. It’s my sin.”

Far, far above him, he saw the angels turning to look at the invisible sky above. Their whips dropped to the ground but remained above him as he fell—faster and faster.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This ended up longer than expected so my one-shot that would've been a two-shot is now going to be a three-shot. Hope you enjoy! Thanks so much for reading!


	3. The Lonely Hours Afterwards

Crowley felt his body crash into the ground, his wings screaming in utter agony as a pain unmatched by anything he’d experienced Up-There tore through him. He lost control of his body—feeling his limbs and his wings spasm uncontrollably. He didn’t know where he was, his eyes still burning and stinging with too much blood for him to be able to see. It was dark, though. It was dark and it hurt, and Crowley was convinced he’d fallen into Hell. 

He was down amongst his own kind who would gladly see to it that he was torn limb from limb. Crowley felt himself screaming—not sure if it was from the pain or the fear or if he was warning his fellow demons to stay back. Maybe if he was loud enough, he would frighten them off.

Unaware of how long he had thrashed and struggled, Crowley suddenly felt his body become weak. His wings no longer beat against the ground beneath him, ending the small fireworks of pain that had been erupting since he crashed, and his hands fell to his sides. He let out one last shriek, realizing his body was giving out and wanting to ward off his enemies, then succumbed to a frigid darkness.

Finally, the pain stopped like a light snuffed out. He was at peace, feeling nothingness—experiencing dreamlessness. His mind was empty and recovering.

Then he felt arms underneath him. He realized that he’d Fallen into Hell and one of his enemies was trying to carry him off.

He thrashed away on instinct, his eyes snapping open and burning from the remains of the blood he’d cried. Everything was bleary and awful, but even from what he could see, it didn’t look like the Hell he remembered. It was a warm place, not hot—not crowded and noisy. It didn’t smell like cinders or rot or sulfur. Rather, dust and paper.

“It’s okay! It’s okay, Crowley! It’s just me. It’s Aziraphale. I-I was trying to move you. I wanted to take you upstairs to rest.”

The voice snapped him the rest of the way out of his stupor. It sounded like Aziraphale, but Crowley knew that was a fantasy far too good to be true. This was just another trick from the angels and they weren’t going to fool him twice.

He hissed at the impostor and scrambled away, trying to stand up but nearly falling over. His wings screamed in violent protest of his movements, but he tried again to stand while showing as much rage and venom to the angel as he could. Again, he slumped over to his right—something keeping him off balance. 

That was when his burning eyes landed on the ground, and on the wing he was crouching on. His wing… Gabriel had torn it off just before he Fell. Ripped it… He really, really ripped it off.

The fake Aziraphale was still trying to talk to him and Crowley found himself spitting harsh words back at him, trying to make him go away. He knew it was Gabriel. It _had_ to be. Falling from Heaven didn’t land you on your best friend’s doorstep—it landed you in Hell or back in the angels’ clutches. The impostor was still talking to him as Crowley resigned himself to crying as he reached out to pick up his wing.

His hand was shaking so badly, and Crowley had never in his life felt the level of terror and horror as he did now. He stared in sick fascination as his severed wing hung unnaturally at a strange angle by the intact skin around the shattered bone. His wing… He’d always taken such good care of it. Always tended to his feathers, always groomed them and pulled away the loose ones when it came time to molt. He’d cherished them in a way no other demon bothered. 

He’d loved them, and now… 

“Why are you doing this?” Crowley pleaded, feeling more tears ooze from his eyes—thick and burning. “I told you everything I know…” There was no reason to do this besides cruelty. They were hurting him because they wanted to, because they saw fit to, and it was never going to stop.

“Crowley, it’s me! Really,” the angel implored. It scooted closer to him and Crowley fumbled away, hissing like a snake without daring to transform. Even if it wasn’t really Aziraphale, he couldn’t bear to have the images burned into his brain of his best friend slicing him apart with a holy sword. “What can I do to prove it? Please, Crowley… Let me take you upstairs. You need to rest.”

“Stay back!” Crowley screamed, wishing it were enough, wishing he could reason with these monsters. Their imagination and viciousness was unmatched by any demon he’d ever met. For this trick, they were crueler than Lucifer himself. “You’ve done enough! You’ve had your fun, now let me go! Let me go or let me die—I don’t care anymore! Just leave me! _Leave me!”_

He expected to see Gabriel’s face appear before him, expected the book shelves and carpet he’d bled all over to turn into blindingly white walls and floors. But none of that happened.

The angel bowed its head and for the first time, Crowley realized that it had been crying. It looked like Aziraphale and it had tears streaming down its face… He’d never seen Aziraphale cry and it ripped at him. 

“I’ll go upstairs then,” the angel said, its voice choked yet still straining to sound proper and gentlemanly. “You can… You can call for me, Crowley. If you need anything. _Anything at all._ I’m just upstairs. I’ll wait. I won’t bother you again.”

And then he was gone, just like that, leaving Crowley alone and confused—more afraid by himself than he had been in the face of the impostor. When was it going to snap back to the white walls? When was Gabriel going to come in with more holy water? When was the floor going to drop out beneath him again and leave him falling for another eternity?

The thoughts worked him into a frenzy and his instincts told him to get up and run while he was on his own. Maybe he could find a way out of the room when it was disguised as Aziraphale’s shop. He tried to get to his feet again, but his right wing hung limply and toppled him over. He fell directly onto it, felt another part of it snap, and screamed. 

He took such good care of them! Why, why were they ruined now? 

Crowley felt himself start to sob, hardly connected to any of his body’s functions besides the waves of pain that coursed through him. His hands kept going back to his wing, trying to smooth the tattered feathers, trying to straighten out the shattered bones. As he carded his fingers through his own, graying and dead feathers, he realized how badly damaged his hands had become. His fingernails were cracked, some missing, and he attempted to use his powers to heal without expecting much. Demonic powers didn’t work in Heaven…

So why did his nails grow back? Why did the lash marks from the whips heal when he closed his eyes and focused on them? He was able to heal his still-aching throat and whisk away the blood on and around him. With some focus, he was able to painfully correct his right wing. Some feathers were still missing, but the wing arched and bent the way it was meant to. He was able to fold it open and closed again without feeling as if he were being sliced open with knives.

He didn’t know how long he sat on the floor tending to his right wing’s feathers, but it calmed him—grounded him. He had to have touched and groomed each and every single one, making sure they were all laying straight and flat and smooth. Damaged feathers were plucked out and left on the carpet, the small twinges of pain meaning hardly anything to him now that his body felt mostly normal albeit exhausted. 

Finally, after all was said and done, Crowley realized he was exhausted. He’d cleaned himself and healed himself and hadn’t heard a single sound from anywhere in the shop. Not that he’d really been listening though. A customer or two might’ve tapped on the glass or spoke loudly outside, but he couldn’t remember. All he remembered was his feathers and how messy they were. 

Why hadn’t Gabriel come back for him yet?

Slowly, after slinking around the shop and poking his nose into things only he and Aziraphale could’ve possibly known about, Crowley realized this was no trick. He wasn’t in Heaven and the angel he’d screamed at had been Aziraphale all along.

Aziraphale had been the one trying to carry him off after he landed. Aziraphale had been the one crying for him.

The thought made Crowley want to cry.

It would be better for the both of them if he took his severed wing and crawled home, but the thought of returning to his flat terrified him. He would be caught there, and knew it. His heart was longing for his friend, and he yearned for his comfort so desperately that it left him ashamed. 

His love for Aziraphale very nearly got him killed—could very well still get him killed—yet Crowley found himself shuffling up the stairs to a space he’d never gone before. Aziraphale had never invited him into his bedroom. They always sat in his shop or in its back office. 

It was so hard to move with one wing on his back and one in his hands, but Crowley managed. He felt himself whining in the back of his throat with every step, his body so fatigued that it threatened to spill him with every motion.

When he made it to the top of the stairs, he found Aziraphale sitting up in his bed. The angel was looking at him like he’d seen a ghost, the surprise on his face was too genuine for a rat like Gabriel to fake, and when this Aziraphale offered him tea, Crowley was only too happy to accept. 

If this cup, too, was laced with holy water, so be it. Hopefully this time it would kill him.

While Aziraphale was gone, Crowley sat in the bed with his attention returned to his severed wing. It was making him sick to stare at the feathers which seemed grayer by the second. He had the thought, the innocent _thought,_ that he might be able to heal it—put it back where it was before and go on like the incident in Heaven never happened. Aziraphale had apparently tried to heal what he could of the injury, but hadn’t bothered trying to fit the wing back into place. It wouldn’t have worked for him anyway, Crowley assumed. 

So he tried it himself.

The wing began to adhere, his skin reopening to connect with the old tissue. He felt the blood start running back into the extremity with an almost unbearable stinging pain, comparable to the holy water he’d been tricked into drinking. He thought that meant it was working and carefully let go of the wing only to have the skin rip itself again under the weight of the feathers. The wing fell limp onto the pillow behind him and Crowley let out a loud scream of rage before throwing the mass of black feathers onto the floor away from him. 

He’d lost it, and he was never getting it back.

Aziraphale returned shortly thereafter and Crowley had lost all sense of his pride, all sense of himself. He was ashamed that his friend kept seeing him cry, that he couldn’t stop himself from leaking the crimson tears all over every surface he touched. All he wanted was to have Aziraphale shush him and pull him close, but all he ended up doing was screaming in his friend’s face and chasing him away. 

Aziraphale had looked at him with such disappointment when he demanded to be given his wing. Crowley couldn’t stand it. 

There was no hope left for them, was there? He realized this as he laid his wing down on the bed, arranging it in a way that looked somewhat natural when he laid himself upon it. If he tried to get closer, he would put Aziraphale in danger…

And if he kept snapping like a child because he was angry and afraid and in pain, Aziraphale was going to push him away in disgust. He was already so very clearly repulsed at what the demon had become. Aziraphale was friends with _Crowley,_ the proud and dare he say suave demon who always looked his best and played it cool. Crowley always had his wits about him, always had something witty or at least smooth to say. Crowley didn’t collapse into tears of blood and stain everything in the angel’s bookshop. Crowley didn’t carry around dead things and pretend they were still alive and well. 

It didn’t matter that Crowley loved him and wanted him safe. Aziraphale was going to leave him on his own before too long. Once he was healed enough to go home, Aziraphale would probably sigh in relief and privately chant “good riddance.”

Good riddance…

It was all Crowley could think as they had their tea and argued over his wing. Aziraphale wanted to take it away from him and Crowley couldn’t understand why. It was so easy for the angel to overlook its significance—so easy for him to look at the graying feathers and see nothing but rot. He didn’t realize the life force Crowley had put into keeping them and tending them. He didn’t realize that his wings were the only thing which set him apart from every single other demon. His wings at least made him look, to some extent, like what he used to be. With his wings intact, he had been the dark angel—not fully a demon. Not completely unworthy of an angelic form. 

The Almighty, he’d thought, must have let him preserve them for a reason. He wasn’t covered in sores or rot or dust—he was radiant and clean (when not covered in scales). The only thing that set him apart from the angels were his slit pupils and black wings.

Now, he looked nothing like them. Now there was no dark angel, just a hideous, yellow-eyed demon. 

Aziraphale didn’t understand what that felt like. He didn’t see why Crowley wouldn’t let him take his wing and dump it in the rubbish bin. 

After the angel had left the bedroom, Crowley positioned his wing underneath him, straightening out the breaks and smoothing his fingers through the feathers as he rested. Somehow, it comforted him. It reminded him of how he would spend bored night at home in the winter when it was too cold for him to find other entertainment.

He could spend weeks at a time grooming his wings. The smallest touch triggered a thousand pleasure receptors in his brain—rewarding him for tending to all the smooth, crooked feathers. 

Now, he touched his wing and felt nothing in return except the dull throb in his back, as if a knife had been stuck there and never taken out. He mourned it… He wanted to put it back the way it had been. He wanted to pretend, as he laid on it carefully and groomed it, that it was still attached.

When he closed his eyes and stroked the feathers, it almost felt normal. He must’ve fallen asleep that way, for who knows how long, because when his eyes opened next the feathers were gone. 

Crowley sat up in horror, feeling around behind him at the crimson-stained sheets and looking on the floor. He didn’t realized he was sobbing and choking on breaths he didn’t need until his stinging eyes landed on a folded piece of paper.

_Crowley,_

_I cannot describe in words how saddened I am for your loss. The pain you have suffered is unimaginable and inexcusable. However, my dearest friend, I cannot let you destroy yourself._

_I have taken your wing for burial. It has begun breaking down and I cannot allow you to lay upon it and grow ill. I do not fret so much for the linens as I do for your hair. The spores have grown onto your beautiful hair and I fear, left to your own devices, you would allow it to lay claim to all of you that is left._

_This action has brought me no pleasure as I am haunted by the knowledge that it will bring you pain. Please forgive me._

_Forever yours truly,_

_Aziraphale_

Crowley soon learned the letter spoke truth, a thin film of white mold had grown into his hair that he cleared away with a half-hearted snap of his fingers. Just because it spoke truth, however, did not make it any easier to swallow.

His wing which, last he knew, was safe and within reach, was now gone—leaving behind a single feather that appeared to have gotten snagged. Aziraphale had taken it, disposed of it like a rotten scrap of food left in the refrigerator.

Before he could catch himself, Crowley found himself calling for the only person in the world he knew—the one he trusted, and the one who had hurt him most—not sure if in seek of comfort or to vent his wrath. In the moment, he was too distraught to even speak the angel’s name. 

“How _could_ you!?” He cried, the words being torn from his lips in a mournful, angry scream. “You stole it!”

The accusation burned his own throat like acid. Deep down, he knew why Aziraphale had done it. He knew… He understood. But it _hurt._ Aziraphale had no idea what he’d done.

“Yes. Yes, Crowley, I took it,” Aziraphale said.

“It wasn’t yours to _take!_ It was mine!” Crowley screamed. He felt himself falling out of control again. He felt his lips moving without his permission, felt his pain and anger making a conduit of him. “That wing is mine! Where did you put it? Where is it?” 

“Crowley, it was _rotting._ It had grown mold—it was going to make you ill.”

“It wasn’t yours! I wasn’t meant to lose it twice!” Crowley felt his voice crack, embarrassment ripping at him until he felt compelled to hide his face in his hands. 

“I’m sorry… Please, believe me. You have no idea how sorry I am. But we both know you couldn’t put it back,” Aziraphale said, sounding rushed and frantic. He was emotional to, but somehow it gave Crowley no reassurance. “There was no sense keeping it—”

No sense keeping it? It was part of his body! Part of his _celestial_ body! It was literally one of the last things he had which connected him to his life before the Fall—the true Fall.

“You stole it… Put it out with the Wednesday trash to get smashed up and dumped!” Crowley shrieked, images of his black feathers sticking up out of a pile of refuse terrorizing him.

“I buried it, Crowley! With my own hands!” True to his words, Aziraphale flashed his still-muddy palms. His suit even had spatters and smears of Earth he had yet to wash away. “I dug the hole! I did it properly. I would _never_ throw a part of you into the garbage! Not even a single feather! I lov—I care too much to… No—No, Crowley, I _love_ you too much for that.”

The words tore through him like a bullet and all Crowley could do was stare at him, cringing. Love? No, no. Love was what caused this whole mess.

The angels’ wicked words and threats and haunted him as he stared at Aziraphale’s sad, expectant face. They wanted Aziraphale to admit to loving him so they could cause him to Fall. They wanted an excuse to drag Aziraphale to that awful place and torture him with whips and swords. They would take him and tear off his wings.

Crowley could see it. He could see it as if it were happening.

He could see red blood pouring down from Aziraphale’s pearly wings.

He almost let out a whimper it was so horrific, but with a blink his vision was cleared and Aziraphale was just staring at him with worry and hurt.

“Be careful, angel,” Crowley said, his voice still trembling just slightly. “If they find out you’re in love with the other side they’ll smash your wings and rip them off.”

“There is no other side, remember? Just our side.” 

Crowley didn’t know why, but the words enraged him. He admitted what he’d gone through—told Aziraphale why… He _confessed_ and Aziraphale made it a joke.

“Well our side got my bloody wing torn off! Get it back!”

“I can’t do that, Crowley, and you know it. It was _rotting._ What were you going to do? Rot with it?”

“If I was, that’s my business...” Crowley was tempted, again, to turn into a snake a slither away. He could hide somewhere in the shop where Aziraphale couldn’t find him, just out of reach, and curl up and sleep for the rest of eternity. He almost did, and then Aziraphale’s eyes started to glisten with tears and he was left feeling ashamed instead. 

Aziraphale was only doing what was best for him and he knew it, whether he wanted what was best for him or not. 

“I won’t let you destroy yourself. I’d sooner destroy Heaven and Earth than watch you die.”

For Someone’s sake, Crowley couldn’t stand the fact that Aziraphale was now crying. He dropped himself onto the bed and covered his eyes, unable to watch what was happening. He just wanted all of it to stop—to go away. He just wanted to forget that any of this ever happened. 

“Crowley—”

“Do me a favor and stop talking, angel,” Crowley pleaded, trying not to cry himself. “There’s nothing more to say.” Then, terrified Aziraphale would decide he was right, that there really was nothing left worth saying between them again, added: “Right now. There’s nothing more to say right now. Please… Leave me. I want to be alone.”

It wasn’t true though. He wanted, more than anything, for Aziraphale to sit next to him and drink tea...or wine.

But when the angel made the offer, Crowley had retreated so far into himself that he declined. He wanted Aziraphale to stay with him. He wanted to wrap himself up in the angel’s wings and apologize for everything. His heart, or what was left of it, felt shredded and bloody. It was more than a cup of tea and polite conversation could fix, but Crowley still hated himself for turning it away. Even if he had to… He just would’ve attacked Aziraphale again, too out of control to keep himself in check, and that was unacceptable.

He couldn’t suffer at the hands of the angels to keep Aziraphale safe and then crash land at home and do the damage himself.

Downstairs, he heard Aziraphale—uncharacteristically angry—turn away a customer on the telephone. 

It was his fault… It was all his fault that the angel was even upset. 

He extended the one wing he had left and covered himself with it—hiding under the curtain of feathers for what might’ve been days, could’ve been years. He stayed there, unmoving except to groom his feathers, until he had his memories under control. He stayed still until he had run through every single possible scenario he might face when he went downstairs to leave. 

Because he had to leave. It was too dangerous for Aziraphale if he were to stay much longer. He would suffer if he had to, but he wouldn’t put his friend at risk. 

He couldn’t.

His first attempt to broach the subject ended in utter failure. Crowley had, inadvertently, offered up his heart and Aziraphale appeared to do the same only to snatch it away at the last second with a thoughtless, “Perhaps not.” It left him feeling cheated and Crowley said more words he didn’t mean before going back to his cage of glossy feathers. 

That lasted for quite a while, but Crowley refused to let himself break completely. He needed to keep it together just long enough to get home. He could go home, he reminded himself, and put all this behind him. Maybe in a year or two, they’d both have forgotten the whole thing.

So, Crowley made himself presentable and ran through his loose script. He avoided eye contact with Aziraphale as much as possible as they spoke, doing his best not to get emotional when Aziraphale confessed the most incriminating of all his sins.

“In love with you, Crowley,” Aziraphale said with his eyes squeezed tightly shut as if the words hurt as they passed his lips. God… Satan—Crowley wished beyond belief that he could kiss those lips and shut the angel up before he said anything worse. Why didn’t the angel listen when Crowley warned him that that love was going to get him injured? Didn’t he realized Crowley couldn’t bear to see it happen? “I am… I have been for some time now. And I’m sorry.”

 _Don’t be. Don’t be… Just ask me to stay and I will,_ Crowley thought. What he said instead was, “Yeah, I’d be sorry if I was in love with a demon, too. It never leads to any good.” Then he left and had to miracle for a pair of sunglasses to hide not only his yellow eyes but the tears that were bleeding from him again.

He should’ve taken the bus, but instead he found himself walking back to his flat. Walking the long, long way home chased by his thoughts. 

When he arrived, he found his Bentley where he’d left it—marred by the passage of time. How long had he been gone, Crowley wondered and then immediately dismissed. With one caress of his fingertip, the Bentley was fully restored and shining in the lamplight. 

The doorman paid him no mind as Crowley slipped into the building and made his way up the stairs. He felt haunted the whole time he moved, to the point he hesitated before opening his door as if it were never locked.

Crowley felt like he was being watched with every step he made through his flat. Everything was as he’d left it, a thick coat of dust and endless spiderwebs over top of it, but otherwise untouched. He forgot to ask how long he’d been…

No. Don’t think about it.

Crowley went to his kitchen and grabbed for a bottle of scotch and a glass. On second thought, he didn’t need the glass. 

Being alone made him more nervous, more afraid than ever, but he knew he had to get used to it. He couldn’t go back to Aziraphale’s shop. Especially not now that the angel had made his confession.

If he stayed close, there was a chance he might tempt him—make him Fall. God—Satan… Anyone. He would rather die a thousand times than cause Aziraphale to go through what he had. The thought of Gabriel ripping off Aziraphale’s wings summoned tears of blood to the backs of Crowley eyes. He warded them off with a deep gulp of scotch. 

He wasn’t going to think about it anymore, he decided. He would forget it ever happened. He would forget why he was tortured, maybe convince himself he’d lost his wing during the Armageddon-That-Never-Quite-Happened. He’d easily convince himself that Aziraphale only admitted to loving him out of pity…

He took another swig from the bottle and sat down in his throne at his desk, trying to push back memories of the last time he’d been here. 

He stared at his phone a long time, thinking about Aziraphale—wanting to call him, stupidly. A foolish idea.

His eyes traced the phone to his answering machine which was now looking almost full. To pass the time, Crowley rewound it a bit to where he remembered it being last—careful not to go too far and play Hastur’s unpleasant voice.

When he hit play, the first sound he heard was Aziraphale.

“—and that lemon _tart!_ Oh, how delicious! You really should’ve tried some. I don’t understand why you won’t try anything when we go out! Well, that’s just how you are, I suppose. Anyway, talk soon!” Aziraphale’s voice sounded so charming and welcoming it made him want to cry. Again! He didn’t though. Just took another sip of scotch as the next message started to play. “Crowley! It’s been a while… I haven’t heard from you and thought I might give you a call...” He was nervous, trying to play it off and force a tone of happy indifference. “I hope you’re just sleeping. I know how you like sleeping—I never got much into it myself unless… Well, I’m sure you know more about it than me.” What did that even mean? “I might stop by later just to...to check on you. Give me a call when you get this.” There were several more messages like that and Crowley felt his heart begin sinking more and more with each one. 

Aziraphale acted as if he thought Crowley had simply walked away from him. Not once did he say “I hope you’re alright” or “I’m worried about you.” He just referenced the fact that Crowley was gone and not responding to him. Aziraphale had started to resent him—while he was being torn to pieces, Aziraphale was renouncing him. 

“I don’t know what I’ve done to you to deserve this. I forgave you for...for all the things you said to me and how you acted. I believed everything you said to me—like a fool. Like… Like a fool,” he said with a deep sigh that made Crowley’s heart tighten. “I never expected you to treat me like this. I was so focused on the good I saw in you, but... Maybe underneath it all, you really are bad. Maybe I was a fool to think you could possibly have a compassionate bone in your body. To think I was naive enough to believe it when you told me I was your best friend. It’s all too obvious now that I’m nothing to you. Goodbye, Crowley.”

Crowley had been having his wings ripped off and Aziraphale thought he had been off gallivanting somewhere without him. That hurt. It hurt more than his missing wing.

But not for long.

Three more large drinks of scotch and Crowley was tottering off to water his plants. Their spray bottle was barely a third of the way full and the plastic trigger threatened to break as he pulled it. He misted pots full of dried up stems and leaves and mold. 

What else was there to do?

He must’ve stood there uselessly pulling the trigger for at least an entire day, sipping more scotch the moment he felt his buzz starting to fade. Maybe he ought to buy new ones… Maybe.

It scared him a little that he didn’t have any desire to frighten the plants. He didn’t want to yell at their corpses. He felt like he’d let them down. They’d certainly waited for him to come back, needing him for food and water, and without him they’d died. Aziraphale hardly waited for him at all…

Stupid angel, Crowley thought.

Then, as if to punish him for the thoughts, a bolt of white-hot radiance shot through him from head to foot. It filled him with an almost overwhelming heat and brought him to his knees. His wing extended on its own and Crowley stumbled—trying to compensate for the unbalanced weight only to discover he wasn’t being pulled to one side under the weight of his wing. He looked to his left and was met with the shimmering of white feathers. 

He jerked backwards, believing for a moment that the angels had set up an ambush for him and were back for him, flaunting their intact wings. 

When the feathers moved with him, Crowley realized that they were attached to him. The wing—the _white_ wing—was attached to him at the spine. 

His hands shook as they reached out for the feathers; his knees buckled and dropped him to the floor. 

When he ran his fingers between the soft, white plumes, he felt the familiar tremors of pleasure wash over him. They were attached… These white feathers were attached to him in place of the wing he’d lost.

For a moment, his heart raced with joy and hope. White wings were the mark of an angel. Was it possible that after his torture, after his mistreatment and suffering, the Almighty saw fit to shower him—a demon—with divine forgiveness? He’d been healed, but was he forgiven?

Crowley pulled both of his wings forward, intending to meld the feathers together—just to celebrate the fact that he could—only to stop just before the tips of the plumes could touch. His left wing was untainted white, but the right one remained pitch black.

So he wasn’t forgiven…

He was just...fixed. Somewhat. It was like replacing the fender of a red car with a green one. It looked tacky and awful and everyone who saw would know the car had been damaged in an accident. This wing, somehow, felt worse than the lack of one. This wing mocked him with the promise of salvation while his black wing reminded him that he was eternally damned. He had half the mind to tear them both off—to pluck out every feather on both wings by hand so no one would ever see what spectacle he’d become. 

Crowley was torn between being grateful and spiteful. He had a wing, but it wasn’t _his_ wing. He was happy, and yet not satisfied. Did he look like a fool this way? Would a change of clothes help? Maybe he could add more white to his clothes… Maybe he could try to play it off, incorporate it into his aesthetic. 

But no matter what he tried to imagine, Crowley saw himself looking like a circus performer and felt ashamed. 

This had to be Aziraphale’s doing, Crowley decided after three changes of clothes and a haircut. Only Aziraphale could try to do something so kind and have it turn out terrible.

( ) ( ) ( )

Crowley had moved his throne into a new place in Aziraphale’s bookshop today. Every week it felt like he moved it somewhere new. At first it was in a secluded back corner by a dirty window. Then it was a little closer to Aziraphale’s desk. Then it had come to sit across from Aziraphale’s reading chair.

Now it was sitting, at a slight angle, right beside it in a way that blocked one of the shelves.

Aziraphale didn’t complain. He was just happy to have Crowley near him and _functioning._

He was much quieter than he used to be, always giving Aziraphale the sense that he was lost in his own thoughts much of the day. Sometimes he would strike up conversation, but never for very long. He seemed content to just sit in silence—staring at a wall or a book or out a window. 

Most of the time, Aziraphale noted, he did so while grooming his feathers. He always seemed to have one of his wings in his hands when it was just the two of them alone. He would pluck little feathers that had come loose, would straighten ones that overlapped...sometimes he would just run his fingers through them.

Aziraphale wondered if he’d always been so diligent in his care of his wings or if it was a result of the trauma. He’d never ask.

It did make him wonder if he should’ve given his own wings the same care when he’d had the chance. Not that he would’ve changed a thing, given the opportunity. Just seeing Crowley grooming the white feathers was enough to quell the small, jealous pang the angel sometimes felt in his chest. 

“I can fix yours too, if you’d like,” Crowley had offered once when he caught Aziraphale watching him. “I know it can be hard to reach the ones in the back.”

“No,” Aziraphale had said, forcing himself to smile before hiding his pain behind a sip of tea. “That’s quite alright. I...I’m very ticklish there.”

The fact of the matter was he couldn’t bear to show Crowley the truth—that his own wings, both of them, had been ripped to tatters in order for the Almighty to build one new one for the demon. He had hoped without praying that his feathers might grow back with time, but it was becoming evident that that was not part of the agreement. 

He’d said he would give both of his wings for Crowley to have one. God had followed through—and perhaps with a tad bit of spite for all of the disrespect Aziraphale had shown in his anger.

It was still worth it to see Crowley so at ease. Parts of him were still haunted, but at least his body was intact. At least he could sit in his tacky throne and play with his feathers—both the black and white. Every now and then, he’d hold the tip of one between his lips (almost as if he were kissing it) and Aziraphale would find himself overcome with giddiness. They were his feathers, after all, that were making Crowley so happy. It was his secret present and Crowley seemed incapable of getting enough.

Even so, it was still painful to have the feathers constantly before him. Sometimes it even felt as if Crowley were flaunting them on purpose even though there was no way he would’ve known of Aziraphale’s sacrifice. 

This became especially problematic with the throne now placed so close to Aziraphale’s chair. The black feathers kept bumping into him as he tried to read and Crowley preened his feathers for the ten thousandth time. 

“Dearest, would you please?” Aziraphale said, holding a hand to his face to keep the feathers from brushing him.

Crowley looked up like he just realized Aziraphale were there, but didn’t lower his wing. He had one of the longer white feathers in his hand and was separating the vanes with his fingers—a ritual he would perform a dozen times over per feather until he’d touched them all.

“I’m trying to read,” Aziraphale added when Crowley didn’t respond.

“I’m sorry?” Crowley asked, staring from behind his dark glasses.

“Your feathers,” Aziraphale clarified, gesturing to the ones almost in his eyes.

“Oh...” Crowley said, sounding very far away. Suddenly, his wings were gone, tucked away, and he had turned his face away to stare at one of the shelves. He had sunk low into his chair and seemed to Aziraphale to be upset. 

“I didn’t mean to...to interrupt. You can keep...” What was he supposed to call that? Cleaning himself? _Playing_ with himself? 

“It’s fine,” Crowley said, still sounding distant. 

“Is anything the matter?”

“I’m sorry?” Crowley asked, turning to look at him again—seeming confused and lost. It wasn’t like him to be so out of sorts.

“Crowley, is everything alright?”

“Oh! Oh… Yes. Yes, I suppose.” One of his wings came back out, the black one this time, and was back to grooming it while mindful to keep it in his own space. 

Did he not know what to do if he wasn’t touching them? Is that all he did when he was at his own flat? That didn’t seem possible. This had become a compulsion. It was the symptom of something else and it was driving Aziraphale mad that Crowley would rather preen himself hour after hour, day after day, than speak a word of what bothered him.

“If you keep worrying them like that, they’ll fall out,” Aziraphale said, realizing after the words slipped out that it was the exact wrong thing to say.

At the same time that Crowley yanked out four of his own feathers in one motion, at the same time that a tear of blood slid out from under his glasses, the demon let out a choked, agonized whine and got to his feet.

For a moment, Aziraphale had the fear that Crowley was about to walk out on him. He didn’t know why the thought scared him so much—perhaps because Crowley flinched anytime a person came into the shop and Aziraphale couldn’t imagine him out on the street. 

He was about to speak his apologies, already getting to his feet as well and moving to put a hand on Crowley’s shoulder, but before he could touch him, the demon collapsed into a spool of black and red scales and was hissing at him. 

“Well that’s unnecessary!” Aziraphale called.

His only reply was another hiss and Crowley lunging at him with the empty threat of biting. 

“Crowley… I am sorry. I wasn’t thinking. You just keep touching them. They’re not going anywhere. You don’t need to clean them all day.”

Crowley hissed at him, louder and longer even though he was perfectly capable of speaking words in this form as well. 

“Why won’t you just talk to me? I want to help you… You moved in here—you made that decision on your own—and yet in the whole time you’ve been here, you’ve hardly said five words to me.

Crowley was spooling in on himself even tighter, his head sinking down as his forked tongue tasted the air. His yellow eyes were fixed on Aziraphale’s—unable to blink, unable to cry in this form. 

That was it, wasn’t it? He didn’t want Aziraphale to see him vulnerable again. Even after all this time, he was trying to play the tough guy when it just wasn’t necessary. 

Aziraphale gave a heavy sigh and sank down onto the carpet, sitting cross-legged in front of the writhing rope of snake that was his friend. Crowley laid his head down on the wrapped up layers of his body, seeming to be over his fit of hissing. After nearly ten minutes of silence, Aziraphale reached out slowly and stroked his fingers across the top of Crowley’s head. 

He’d never actually touched his snake form before. Come to think of it, Aziraphale had never touched a snake in all his years on the Earth. He was surprised at how soft and cool the scales were. He stroked Crowley’s head a few times before realizing that it might be inappropriate—that Crowley might not want someone’s large fingers patting him on the face—so he pulled back.

Slowly, Crowley began to unspool and began moving forward, climbing into Aziraphale’s lap and coiling back up into a puddle of snake the size of a large dog. That was when Aziraphale learned that his tail had been cut off. Instead of pointing out the obvious, Aziraphale kept the observation to himself as Crowley formed an even tighter spiral than before and laid in the cross of Aziraphale’s ankles. 

They’d ripped off his wing and chopped off his serpent’s tail. What monsters… What _evil demons_ the archangels turned out to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I keep trying to end this story and it's just not getting where I wanted it fast enough :'( Not sure if this is a good or bad thing but I am halfway through what should be in the 4th and final chapter. Thanks so much for reading and hope you're excited with where it's all heading!


	4. An Eternity of Peace

Not too long after the preening incident, Aziraphale decided it was time they chose plants for the shop. He wasn’t too keen on having a bunch of bonsai trees and succulents all over his bookshop, but he was willing to do anything if it put Crowley at ease. As it was, his friend had been spending more and more time as a serpent. He only changed back at tea time, then slithered off to hide in the shadows immediately after. Every now and then he would dart across the feet of customers and that always gave Aziraphale some form of satisfaction, but it wasn’t any better than the constant feather preening. 

In fact, Aziraphale was convinced this was much worse. Crowley was retreating so much further inside himself this way. He didn’t have to talk, didn’t have to answer, didn’t have a face to betray his emotions… 

It didn’t help, either, that after Crowley had walked out—before he returned with Aziraphale’s wing and none the wiser—they had yet to speak a word about their mutual confessions. Aziraphale didn’t want to mention it for the sake of making things even more strained between them, and Crowley… He didn’t seem to want to discuss anything. Aziraphale didn’t blame him for that, of course, but it was hard. He didn’t know how to help… His whole purpose was to bring warmth and light and love, and he couldn’t do anything to make Crowley the slightest bit happy.

So he resorted to this—dragging the demon out into the world and making him drive them both to a greenhouse nearly an hour and a half outside of London. Crowley didn’t put up a fight when Aziraphale had suggested it, but he still didn’t move with his usual swagger as they walked across the gravel parking lot to the quaint little building. 

The property belonged to an artist which Aziraphale found absolutely delightful. He made his own sculptures for faerie gardens and had advertised his unique designs and plants in a housekeeping magazine. Crowley, however, did not seem nearly as impressed. 

“They’ve got bon-sais, eh?” Crowley said.

“Bonsai trees, yes,” Aziraphale said, too polite to correct his continued over-pronunciation. 

“Well, this one just looks dead.”

“We don’t have to get that one. There are plenty.” Aziraphale really didn’t know much about plants and what made them meet Crowley’s extremely high standards, but every plant they passed which he shot down, the angel secretly touched and spruced up. He felt bad for the little things and was wary of the owner’s opinion of them if he came by and overheard Crowley’s unending critiques.

“This one’s not half bad… I think we can work with this one.” He was holding it up to the light the way one might examine a bank note to see if it were counterfeit. He then glanced down at Aziraphale through his dark lenses. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s lovely! Absolutely darling! Should I get a—” He was about to suggest getting a trolley, but Crowley—still staring at him—snapped his fingers and made one appear between them. He set the little maple tree down on it and then pushed it along before Aziraphale could even try to reach for it. “I’ll push it, angel… Wouldn’t want you to get your hands dirty.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Aziraphale said, ignoring the buried insult. 

They walked through the little building, the glass walls giving everything a hazy, shimmering glow. Aziraphale felt quite at home here, remembering a sliver of how he used to feel while guarding the gate in Eden. Immediately, he hoped Crowley didn’t feel the same. 

“This one is nice,” Aziraphale said, pointing to a flowering little tree that made Crowley stick his forked tongue out in disapproval. He had fangs again, too, which Aziraphale noticed with a start. He was stressed under is disinterested demeanor, and it was taking such a toll on him that his disguise was slipping. “What’s that look? I like this one!”

“Look at those petal… Pathetic. I couldn’t let such a pathetic little waste of space take up residence in your bookshop. It’d be a real disgrace,” Crowley hissed, taking the plant from Aziraphale’s hand and setting it back on its stand. The hissing rage in his voice was quite honestly terrifying and Aziraphale backed a step away from him as he moved. A petal or two had wilted, but it hardly seemed a reason to belittle the plant. “I’ll find you a better one,” Crowley added as he walked on. 

As Aziraphale had feared, Crowley’s enraged voice had attracted the attention of the shop owner who smiled as he came over from a back supplies area where he must have been working before. Aziraphale smiled in return, with a grimace beneath it that the man didn’t see, and offered a polite wave. 

“Ah! I see you found a couple that you two like. Is there anything I can help you with? I’ve got a few larger bonsais growing—”

“Get away from us,” Crowley hissed, tasting the air with his full serpent’s tongue as punctuation. 

The gardener’s eyes widened in horror and he stumbled backwards, almost knocking over one his prized trees. (Would have knocked it over, actually, had Aziraphale not silently miracled it back upright.)

“We’re fine for now. Thank you,” Aziraphale said, offering the same grimacing smile. 

The shopkeeper was glancing warily back and forth between them—paying exceptionally close attention to Crowley as he backed away toward the supplies area. 

“Really, Crowley, there’s no reason to act that way. He was hardly worthy—”

“I like this tree,” Crowley interjected, holding up a juniper plant. It grew in tall, sharp stalks and had tufts of green leaves in odd places. It made Aziraphale think of horror movies and haunted forests and wasn’t surprised his dark friend had been drawn to it. 

“That one does have quite the personality!” Aziraphale commented.

“One more, I think… Then the succulents. None of those faerie arrangements though. I don’t need some prissy decorations all over my plants. Humans always seem to think they need to insert themselves into places they have no business being…” He continued grumbling as he wandered around the rows of trees, seeming to get more and more irritated as they neared the end. “There aren’t any good enough. This is just awful...”

“Well I’m sorry I brought you some place awful,” Aziraphale mumbled, Crowley’s negativity starting to wear on him. Perhaps because he was using too much of his energy to keep the shopkeeper from falling into a panic attack…

“I just want one more… It’s not that much to ask.”

“Perhaps your standards are too high for these poor little trees. There’s nothing wrong with getting one that needs a little...tenderness.”

“You’d like me to buy you that wilting little tree back there, but it’s not happening, angel. You deserve better.”

The words struck a chord in him and Aziraphale remained silent as Crowley growled and turned back around, looking around at all the trees. None of the ones left seemed to live up to his expectations—or the expectations he had for what Aziraphale deserved in a tree.

This wasn’t about the plants, but it didn’t feel like his place to comment on it.

“Oh, Hell! If that’s the one you want, we’ll buy it. Fine. Get the ugly tree. I’ll straighten it out when we get home. It won’t even _dream_ of dropping another petal.” (Crowley had not yet noticed that Aziraphale had fixed the wilted flowers.)

So they added the flowering bonsai to the trolley and crossed over to the other side of the greenhouse where the faerie gardens and succulents were on full display. 

Succulents, it seemed, did not have to meet such high standards for Crowley to approve them. Pretty much any that he saw, he wanted—and any Aziraphale even made mention of were added to the trolley as well. 

When it finally came time to check out, the shopkeeper trembled the entire time. He kept his eyes fixed on Crowley who was nonchalantly playing with the cards in his wallet. None of them were real and Aziraphale had already planned to miracle the correct sum of bank notes into the drawer as soon as Crowley’s back was turned. He wasn’t about to let his demon cheat the artist out of his wages.

“I think these will look lovely in the shop,” Aziraphale said, trying to make polite conversation with the nervous gardener. 

“Shop? Yes… It’s a nice selection,” he said.

“I have a bookshop,” Aziraphale offered, smiling more genuinely this time.

“He doesn’t care, angel. He just wants your money. This one should work.” Crowley tossed the plastic card on the counter and fixed the shopkeeper with an exasperated expression. 

“Be polite, Crowley!” Aziraphale scolded. All he got in return was the same exasperated look shot in his direction.

( ) ( ) ( )

Getting the plants arranged in the shop had become a project. Crowley’s project, specifically. And he was a perfectionist, Aziraphale was learning. He left shortly after they had arrived home from the greenhouse (leaving Aziraphale overwhelmed, confused, and frustrated) and had returned with new shelving—decorative shelving—then left again for different ones and new tables. 

Aziraphale, unable to stand the noises of Crowley actually putting them all together by hand instead of with magic, hid in his room for most of the projects. Every now and then he would come down to see how things were going, but all Crowley ever said to him was rambling reasons for why the shelves needed moved and how “ill behaved” the plants were. (Sometimes he was more drunk than others. And one of those times Aziraphale found Crowley crying blood as a simple insult toward the plants became “Well! They think they’re ssso ssssmart with their loaves—loves...leeeavesss. Their leeaavesss! Shakin’ ‘em at me like I don’t know what’sss happening.” Aziraphale did not, in fact, know what was happening either and had left Crowley to it.)

Quite frankly, it was exhausting, but after several weeks, the project was finished and Aziraphale (who had been asleep maybe a day or two out of boredom) awoke to a snake on curled up on his chest. 

“Ah… Crowley? Is everything quite alright?” 

Crowley did not answer or move—not even to taste the air. 

“Are you asleep?” Aziraphale asked, shimmying the slightest bit to prop himself more upright in the bed. The coil of snake that was Crowley slid with no resistance, then his head snapped up from his spooled body and waved back and forth sleepily. “How long have _you_ been asleep?”

“Sssince thisss morning,” Crowley said, groggy. His head was still waving back and forth and he slowly set it back down. “It’sss finishhed.”

“Oh! Well then, I’d like to go see it,” Aziraphale said, starting to sit up more only to have Crowley slowly moved forward and crawl behind his neck, between his flesh and the pillows, and then poke out the other side. He slid down Aziraphale’s chest, then wrapped around his left arm—his body now draped and curled around Aziraphale so much he couldn’t pull him off if he tried. “What in Heaven’s name is this about?” Aziraphale asked, lifting up is now very heavy arm. 

“I’m ssstill sssleepy. Let’sss ssssleep.”

“I… I’m not that tired, myself,” Aziraphale said, letting his arm drop back down onto the mattress. Crowley’s docked tail was staring to curl around the back of his left knee and Aziraphale didn’t think he liked this arrangement very much. 

“It’sss much nicccer to ssssleep with you, Azzziraphale.” His tongue kept tickling Aziraphale’s hand. 

“I’d like to see the plants,” Aziraphale said, absently running his free hand down Crowley’s soft scales.

“Fine… Carry me with you.”

“I can do that,” Aziraphale said, sighing a little at how much weight he would have to carry with Crowley refusing to walk on his own. He wasn’t exactly a small, lightweight serpent. 

“And promissse we’ll take a nap after?” Crowley asked as Aziraphale got to his feet.

“I’m really not tired, Crowley.”

“You can read a book. I want to ressst.”

“You don’t need me supervising in order to get rest,” Aziraphale said as he carried his friend down the stairs awkwardly. Crowley was now moving from one side of his body to the other—his head starting to hook around Aziraphale’s right shoulder, resting his nose against Aziraphale’s throat.

“Okay, angel,” Crowley said quietly. He sounded sad and Aziraphale began to feel twice as heavy. 

It felt ten times worse after he laid eyes on all Crowley had gotten done in the shop.

Some of the shelves had been moved to make room for decorative displays of succulents and little trees. There were two white, crocheted hanging baskets full of succulents that dangled little, green leaves down the sides. An antique table was now sat between their chairs holding the flowering tree Aziraphale had picked out at the greenhouse. There were more trees now, though, each with their own little tables and stands. One, Aziraphale noted, had a little clay faerie sitting in it despite how much Crowley had disapproved of them at the shop. 

“When did you buy more bonsai trees?” Aziraphale asked, peering around in wonder at his shop. 

“Yesssterday night. I found one for you. It’ssss on your desssk,” Crowley said, now moving to lay his head on top of Aziraphale’s. “It’sss actually good enough for you,” he added as Aziraphale went around the corner to his desk. 

The tree in question was in an oval-shaped dish with pebbles and moss. There were three different stalks, the illusion of three different trees, with many little green leaves that had tiny white specks on them. Among the leaves were small white flowers, and with the flowers were red berries the size of a pin head. 

“Oh, Crowley!”

“Isss it alright?”

“It’s beautiful!” Aziraphale said, collapsing into his desk chair in order to be eye-level with the new plant. It was fragrant and dazzling and by far prettier than the one he’d chosen out of pity at the greenhouse. 

“I sssaw it and thought inssstantly of you,” Crowley said, possibly sliding down Aziraphale’s ear intentionally. “I thought—ah, yesss. The angel will love thisss. It’sss a tea tree.”

“I can make tea from it?”

“If you think you have dysssentery, it’sss ssaid to help,” Crowley said, chuckling as his head dropped into Aziraphale’s lap. 

Aziraphale turned the little pot back and forth on his desk, observing the tree from all angles while Crowley slithered up and down his body. It wasn’t until he was positive he had every leaf on the tree memorized that he realized Crowley’s motions were starting to feel like a hug. He was wrapped around Aziraphale’s chest exclusively now with his cold nose pressed into the back of his neck. His tongue poked out every now and then, tickling the sensitive skin. 

He stayed that way a long time, occasionally moving as if to nuzzle Aziraphale’s hair before stilling again. 

“I suppose I do make a comfortable perch when you’re a serpent, don’t I?” Aziraphale asked, trying to think of a better way to ask the real question in the back of his mind. 

“You’re very warm. It’sss ssssso cold.”

“If you turn back to your other form, you won’t be so cold,” Aziraphale offered, trying to get Crowley to admit what he truly wanted. The demon was finally beginning to branch out again after his period of self-isolation and it was becoming all too clear that what he was seeking now was touch—physical closeness with the only friend he had in the entirety of the universe. If not something more...

Crowley moved forward again, sliding past his neck and dropping down into his lap again. 

“Azziraphale… Old friend,” Crowley hissed, wrapping once around the angel’s left knee and then slithering back up to perch on his shoulder. “I don’t feel very well.” 

“Perhaps some sleep would do you well. You’ve been working non stop these past few days,” Aziraphale said, lifting his hand to stroke the top of Crowley’s head. It might’ve been his imagination, but he could’ve sworn he heard Crowley purr at the contact. “If you need my body heat to feel better, I suppose I could pick a book or two and we could go lay down.”

Crowley nodded against him, then coiled around Aziraphale’s shoulders completely so the angel could stand. 

“Is there a reason you wanted to be a snake today?” Aziraphale asked, trying to sound curious as opposed to concerned while he perused his books.

“My wingsss are molting.”

“You don’t have to have them out in your other form.”

“But I can feel it…”

“A little molting is natural. I wouldn’t say anything to you if you felt the need to groom them.”

“I don’t want you to ssssee,” Crowley whispered. 

“It’s nothing embarrassing. Surely you know that! Why, I was molting when we met in Paris. Of course, that was probably the nerves, too, but I was molting nonetheless.”

“My wing isss turning black, angel...” 

Aziraphale felt an odd mixture of relief and disappointment. He was happy Crowley’s wings were going back to being the same color, knowing the demon had been at least somewhat off-put by the white wing. Another part of him felt let down. He had unconsciously been hoping that the white feathers had been a sign that the Almighty was offering Crowley redemption. Aziraphale had been wishing Crowley could rejoin the angels after what he’d gone through, but clearly that was not the case.

Crowley, he thought, might be caught in the same dilemma—not sure whether to be happy or sad.

“That’s splendid!” Aziraphale forced himself to say as he pulled a book off the shelf. “You’ll be back to your old self in no time at all. There’s no need to be ashamed.”

“If you sssay ssso,” Crowley said, squeezing his body around Aziraphale’s chest.

Yes, that was definitely meant to be a hug—though the angel knew his friend would never admit it.

“Alright, I have my book. Let’s lay down upstairs. Do you want me to brew tea before you sleep?”

“No… I want to sssleep.”

So Aziraphale carried him back up the steps and settled them both into the bed, trying to accommodate for the layers of snake wrapped all over him. They laid together for about an hour before Crowley changed back into his regular form, one of his legs hooked over Aziraphale’s and an arm wrapped around his waist. His head was on Aziraphale’s shoulder and, for some reason, it made the angel feel as if his non-beating heart skipped a beat.

Crowley had his wings out, the black wing pressed against the mattress and the white one—speckled here and there with little, new plumage of black—stretched out toward the ceiling. Two white feathers fell off as soon as he’d opened it and Aziraphale had to look away.

“You seem comfortable,” Aziraphale said, shifting a little under the new weight. 

“My wings itch...”

“You _can_ groom them. I’m not going to complain,” Aziraphale said, noting the page he was on and setting his book aside. 

Crowley said nothing, but his eyes were open and he was staring at Aziraphale’s hand. 

“You want me to do it… Don’t you?”

“Well you don’t have to,” Crowley said, his wing starting to fall back against the bed. 

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t. Give it here,” Aziraphale said, holding his hand out until Crowley brought his wing forward into his palm. “Fussy serpent...” His heart was still, metaphorically of course, skipping beats as he began to caress the feathers. As he began to card through them, working out the loose ones and straightening the ones that had started growing in, Crowley closed his eyes and hummed in pleasure. “Are you happy they’re black?” He asked.

Crowley hummed neutrally and pressed his body a little closer. 

“You do look better in black,” Aziraphale added. “I love your black feathers.”

“Do you really? Or are you just saying that so I don’t feel bad that God is forsaking me again?”

“God is not forsaking you _again,”_ Aziraphale said, plucking one of the white feathers. 

“Then why are they growing black then? I was forgiven… It was a white wing. I was given a white wing and it’s getting stained again.”

“Crowley… The feathers…” Aziraphale sighed and ran his fingers through the long feathers a final time. “They’re my feathers. That’s why they’re white.”

In an instant, Crowley’s head was off his chest—his limbs pulled away and his wing flicked back toward the wall. 

“What do you mean?—What are you talking about?”

“The night you left… I-I spoke, well… I prayed? I-I don’t know… I was upset when you left and I had...an exchange of words with the Almighty. A one sided exchange, really. A-Anyway… After you left I told the Almighty that I would give both of my wings for you to have yours back and the Lord followed through. You have two and...and I have two halves.”

“No,” Crowley said, the corners of his mouth turned down in a horrified grimace. “You didn’t… Aziraphale, please tell me this is a joke. Please tell me you didn’t waste your feathers on me.”

It was just like the bonsai trees at the greenhouse. Crowley’s standards for what Aziraphale deserved were so far out of line that nothing outside of absolute perfection could be worthy of him. It didn’t matter if wilted leaves could be mended with proper care—it didn’t matter if the feathers were there, but the wrong color. If it wasn’t outright perfect, it wasn’t worthy. Crowley hadn’t mentioned their confessions, their mutual affections, because he didn’t see himself as worthy. 

“I didn’t waste my feathers. I gave them to you. I wanted you to be happy.”

There was blood rimming Crowley’s eyes and his wings were slowly pulsing back and forth with nervous energy. Aziraphale half expected him to turn serpent again, but instead Crowley just dropped his gaze and shook his head.

“Tell me they’re growing back,” he whispered.

“I’m… I’m afraid they’re not. No.”

“Why would you do this? I never wanted you to lose your wings for me. I can’t… I couldn’t live with myself if I stole your wings like they did to me.”

“No one ripped out my feathers, Crowley. I didn’t even know it happened until much later. It doesn’t hurt. Look—I’ll show you. See?” He shifted around in order to open his wings, trying not to let show how it did affect him to see so many missing feathers. 

The sight was apparently enough to make the demon cry, not that Crowley would allow him to see. 

He let out a hiss and covered his eyes with both hands, pushing himself back against the wall. 

“I-I wanted you to have them, Crowley. I wanted to see you happy. Didn’t they make you happy?” Aziraphale asked.

“Make me happy?” He asked, his voice shaking with a forced laugh. “I can’t repay you. I’ve taken too much and have nothing to offer.”

“I’m an _angel._ I don’t do good deeds in hopes of being repaid. All I want is for you to be happy. I wanted to make you happy and make up for...for what happened. Didn’t they make you happy?”

“The happiest,” Crowley whispered, still covering his eyes. 

“Then that’s all that matters,” Aziraphale said, tucking away his wings and putting a hand on Crowley’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t have made the bargain if I weren’t willing to go through with it. It’s worth it to see you happy. I… I’ll admit I was jealous. I got jealous when you were preening and I couldn’t… But you took better care of them than I ever did so I couldn’t stay upset. So… So lay back down. Let me clean them. I want to. Please.”

It took a bit more coaxing, but after a while, Crowley was curled against him again, letting Aziraphale stroke and preen his feathers. Crowley would, every now and then, hum and press closer—sometimes nuzzle his face further into Aziraphale’s chest or let out these little, nearly intoxicating sighs. It made Aziraphale wonder if the demon had more nerve endings or something that made the chore of cleaning feel somehow pleasurable. If it felt half as good to Aziraphale as it seemingly did to Crowley, he probably would’ve preened just as often.

But then again, demons _were_ creatures of pleasure. He guessed it made sense.

He and Crowley laid together until, at last, every white feather had shed—every black feather had grown in strong, thick, and glossy. Months, Aziraphale realized. They had been in bed together for months doing nothing—not even talking. It was possible Crowley had slept for at least some of it, but Aziraphale treasured every moment, every little hum and sigh. 

With the shedding of the last white feather, Crowley finally moved. He reached his hand out toward Aziraphale’s, touching it as it carded through the black plumage and slowly linking their fingers. 

Somehow, after everything they’d been through, holding hands felt like the most intimate thing they had done. It was more than a simple touch, more than helping his friend clean his feathers… It was more than just laying close and still. It was an agreement, an admission. 

“I love you,” Crowley mumbled, staring at their linked fingers.

“And I you, my dear,” Aziraphale said. Crowley’s gaze dropped and Aziraphale had a sinking suspicion it was due to him not repeating the phrase in its entirety. “I love you more than...all the books in world. All the tea—all the crepes even!” 

Crowley smiled a lazy little grin and pulled away, retracting his wings and laying on his back.

“And as much as I do love you, I would also really love a cup of tea. And we might need to miracle the plants some water.”

“You make tea… I’ll fix the plants. They’ll be fine if they know what’s good for them,” Crowley said, sitting up and stretching his arms far over his head. For the first time in what had to have been over a year, Crowley sauntered—not just walked, but _sauntered!_ —down the steps into the shop.

( ) ( ) ( )

It had seemed for a time that things were getting better. Crowley was more himself with both wings showing black and the plants to distract him from the, ahem, demons in his mind. They had gone out twice at Crowley’s urging for lunch, though Crowley never ate a morsel, and settled into a familiar routine around the shop. Aziraphale would read, meet with collectors and attend auctions—Crowley would scare off customers in one form or another and disappear for hours at a time doing who knows what in the city. But he always came home just after dark and would stay until mid-morning, tending to all their little plants.

Like the last time, they didn’t speak of their mutual confessions again. They did, however, make more of an effort to show it to one another. Crowley would bring home pastries or treats from whatever area he went about his business, and (on special occasions late at night) Aziraphale would preen Crowley’s feathers for him and drink up the little hums and sighs he got in return.

However, it was on a late night such as that when things seemed to stop getting better for a time. 

Crowley had been laying in Aziraphale’s bed, his back and wings facing the angel who lay on his side as well, carding through the black feathers. A few loose ones broke free and the angel set them aside (Crowley didn’t so much as twitch when they were plucked out) and the rest were slowly straightening out. Crowley would hum and sigh and every now and then let out a tiny noise not unlike that which Aziraphale made when he tried filet mignon the first time. 

After a while, Crowley ceased making the noises and Aziraphale realized he’d fallen asleep. His wings were still out though, so Aziraphale continued stroking them—enjoying the glossy feel beneath his fingertips. He wished he had appreciated his own feathers as much when he’d had the chance… His wings had still never grown new feathers and were left patchy and tattered-looking. Any time Crowley offered to preen them, Aziraphale quietly reminded him that they were ticklish and he’d rather not. He had a feeling the demon knew that this was not the case, but Crowley never pushed the issue. 

Aziraphale continued preening the sleeping demon’s feathers, working out loose ones and straightening the rest. Before too long, the feathers had become immaculate and Aziraphale had moved on to simply running his hand up and down the curve of bone at their peak. Crowley made a noise that Aziraphale couldn’t quite place at first, and then made a similar sound as the angel’s hand traveled lower toward the base of his wing where it connected. 

It hadn’t sounded unpleasant, and Aziraphale slid his hand up and down the bow of the wing several times before it happened.

His fingers had just barely brushed Crowley’s back and the demon lurched forward as if Aziraphale had burnt him. His forehead struck the wall and his wings gave three useless beats against the mattress (though one harsh flap caught Aziraphale across the cheek like a slap) all the while Crowley let out the same inhuman scream he had when he’d first crashed into Aziraphale’s shop. 

“Crowley! It’s just me. I’m sorry!” Aziraphale called, getting out of the bed as his friend thrashed and fought against and invisible enemy. 

Crowley had rolled over onto all fours, his wings pulsing nervously while Crowley took several shaky breaths. It sounded, almost, like he was trying to get enough air into his lungs in order to scream again, but losing the use of his vocal cords each time he attempted it.

Aziraphale miracled on the light, hoping it might help Crowley realize where he was—that he wasn’t in danger—and saw that his pillow was now soaked in red blood. His best friend was crying… The shaking breaths had been sobs, and Aziraphale’s heart broke just to see it. 

“Crowley? Are you alright?” Aziraphale asked, slowly sitting back down on the bed. He didn’t dare reach out yet, afraid it might set Crowley off again. 

“Y-You tried to tear off my wing,” Crowley stammered, his breaths still labored as several soft sobs tore themselves free of his chest. 

“No! No, I was cleaning it! I pulled a few feathers, but I wouldn’t _ever_ try to hurt you. It was a nightmare, Crowley… I promise. It was just a nightmare.”

But the demon did not seem convinced. 

“You hate them,” he cried. “You want yours back… I shouldn’t have them.”

“What in heaven’s name are you talking about? I don’t hate them! I could never! I wanted you to have them—I’m happy you have them. Don’t say that...”

It was all too apparent that Crowley wasn’t listening, however. He had his hands fisted in the sheets beneath him, but after a few more quiet, choked declarations of Aziraphale’s resentment toward him, Crowley had swung back his left hand and grabbed his own wing brutally by the bone which connected it to him.

“Stop that!” Aziraphale cried, shock preventing him from getting his hands to listen to him. His eyes were fixed on Crowley’s shaking fist, on the feathers he crushed with it as he started to pull. Crowley let out a demonic wail, his eyes squeezing shut as even thicker drops of blood poured from them. “Stop! You’re—You’re breaking it! You’re going to hurt it!” Finally, his hands responded and he tried to grab Crowley’s fist—trying to make him let go.

But it was too late for that. Aziraphale heard the sickening crack as the bone finally gave out. It must have hurt as terribly as it had sounded for Crowley hadn’t made a noise. His face was caught in a grimace of horror, his eyes open wide and staring as if he’d just realized what he’d done.

After a moment, he let go of the bone only to have his wing double over in a horrid way that reminded Aziraphale of the wing that had been ripped off before. 

Crowley screamed in pain and collapsed against the pillow, clutching onto it while he yelled. His right wing had started beating against the wall as if on its own while the left lay limp against the mattress. Aziraphale reached out to touch it, only to have Crowley wail as soon as his fingers made contact. The demon lashed out at him with his hand when he tried to reach forward again, striking his wrist and pushing it away.

“You broke it! You’ve broken it...” Aziraphale said, his voice shaking. “Let me heal you. Please! I can’t—I can’t help you if you won’t hold still.”

“You tried to… You tried to tear it off.”

“Crowley, it was a nightmare! For heaven’s sake! Stop that!” Aziraphale hated raising his voice to the other man, hated how Crowley was looking at him with mistrust and fear. He started muttering something, and reached back toward his wing against, hissing as his fingers closed around the already broken bone.

Aziraphale thought he might be trying to heal it, but realized with sickened horror that he’d started pulling on it again. 

“Have you gone mad!? Stop that at once!” Not sure what else to do, Aziraphale grabbed Crowley’s wrist and dug in his short fingernails until the demon cried out and let go of his wing. “I will not let you destroy yourself! I didn’t sacrifice my feathers for you to rip them off!”

“I don’t deserve them! I’ve been telling you that! You need to take them back—just take them back!” He tried reaching for his wing again and it took all of Aziraphale’s strength to pin the arm against the mattress. For his efforts, Aziraphale received a loud, demonic screech in his ear as Crowley thrashed against him—his right wing still pounding itself into the wall. Several of its feathers came loose and fell onto the bed, getting mixed up in the struggle. Crowley was continuing to scream and wail his rejections and pleas when Aziraphale gripped the broken bone himself. It took so much energy, so much power and use of his grace, that by the time the bone had snapped back into place, Aziraphale hadn’t any strength left to keep himself up right let alone keep the demon pinned.

He collapsed onto the mattress, his head precariously close to the blood stain seeping into the pillow from Crowley’s frantic tears.

“I need you...to stop screaming...for just a moment, my dear,” Aziraphale said, not even sure the demon could hear him. “I want you to be quiet… You’re working yourself into hysterics. Please calm down...” He was watching Crowley’s horror-stricken face from beside him on the bed, thinking back to the day of the Almost-Apocalypse and how Crowley collapsed as his Bentley burned before him. He looked somewhat like that now, only with tears bleeding from his eyes and nonsensical screams coming from his lips. 

Aziraphale doubted the demon even knew what he was saying—fragments of words and sentences all melding together in his panic. So long as his hands stayed away from his wings, Aziraphale was willing to let him cry it out, though he did wish the demon would lower his voice. 

He had a headache now, his body throbbing from exertion. It took so much out of him to try to use heavenly blessings on a cursed body. Never in his entire existence, not even after thwarting the apocalypse, had he felt so tired.

Crowley was still pleading—begging for something lost to his hysterics—as Aziraphale’s vision became cloudy. 

“My dear… I can’t bear to see you like this. It breaks my heart…” Aziraphale reached forward and ran his hand down the demon’s trembling shoulder pausing briefly before his arm dropped against the mattress again. “How could you ever think I’d want to hurt you? I love you… I love you, Crowley.”

He closed his eyes with a heavy sigh, the sounds of Crowley’s pleas and, now, apologies, fading further and further away until it was finally silent—cold, dark, and silent. 

( ) ( ) ( )

Crowley had been dreaming of falling. He dreamt of burning hot holy flames and broken wings. 

When he felt a hand seize on his left wing, he was suddenly on his knees in Heaven staring up at Aziraphale who called him wretched names and started yanking. It looked so real, it felt _so real_ that he couldn’t even begin to believe it was a nightmare. 

The thought of Aziraphale resenting him made sense. The thought of Aziraphale wanting his feathers back seemed so practical… The idea that he, a demon, had somehow stolen them and the angel was too polite to admit it seemed true. 

It made sense that Aziraphale would tear his wing off in a rage—at least in the midst of the nightmare. To Crowley, it made sense that he should be the one to do it. Still caught in the terror of the falling and the pain of being hated, he’d decided that he needed to. 

It seemed right to sever it. But then Aziraphale had reprimanded him, healed him, and professed his love again. Crowley had just barely heard it over is own pleas for forgiveness he didn’t deserve.

“It breaks my heart… I love you, Crowley.”

He realized then that his wing was no longer broken—that Aziraphale, who’s powers had no reason to work on his demonic form, had healed it at the expense of his own health. 

“Aziraphale? I’m so sorry… I’m sorry—are you alright? What’s the matter? Are you hurt?” He tried shaking him, but the angel did not move. He was struck with the fear that the angel had died—that he had inadvertently killed him by forcing him to use Heavenly gifts on his demonic body, that the Almighty had allowed Aziraphale to heal a demon for the ultimate price. 

When Aziraphale’s body remained warm after several long minutes of panic, Crowley felt himself grow calm. His mind began to clear and all he felt now was shame and the stinging in his eyes from his tears. He pulled in his wings, unable to look at them as he realized what he had done. 

He’d broken it… He’d broken the wing Aziraphale had gifted him all because of a night terror.

He’d never been made to feel so foolish. 

He continued to speak his apologies to Aziraphale who lay unmoving next to him in the bed. Crowley curled next to him, afraid to touch him—feeling unworthy of touching him for the longest time. 

By the time the sun had risen, Crowley began to feel the pull of sleep returning again—exhausted from his mental collapse and seeking repose from the guilt of his actions. He needed a place to hide and nowhere seemed better than the place behind his eyelids. 

Slowly, he felt his body shifting back into its natural state—scales taking over his flesh, his limbs receding into his spine, wings disappearing all together until he’d become fully serpent. He coiled around himself on the bed beside Aziraphale, absently flicking his tongue against the angel’s hand. He felt himself slip away again, unaware that his body unspooled just enough that a few layers of himself were pressed into Aziraphale’s arm. Unaware that his head had come to rest in the angel’s hand. 

He felt safe—unaware that he was being petted lovingly. He didn’t feel the gentle kiss pressed to his nose, but for a moment of his slumber, he felt warm with love. 

When Crowley awoke, he was startled to find himself draped over Aziraphale’s shoulders downstairs in the shop. His head lifted up, staring directly into the shocked face of a wannabe customer who screamed. Their scream caused him to draw backwards in surprise, probably making the human think he was posing to attack, and the customer ended up dropping their book and running for the door. 

“It’s about time you woke up,” Aziraphale said as he walked around his counter and stooped down to pick up the book. 

Crowley wrapped his docked tail around the angel’s arm and squeezed it, wary of falling down. 

“It’s been almost a month, you know.”

“I guess I wassss tired,” Crowley said, wrapping himself once around Aziraphale’s torso and coming to rest his head on the angel’s shoulder.

“I’m not surprised. You worked yourself up into quite the fit. Though, I must take responsibility for touching the base of your wings. I should’ve realized that was sensitive place for you.”

“It’sss my fault,” Crowley said, unwilling to listen to Aziraphale blame himself for his own lack of self control. He was even more ashamed now than he had been the night of his collapse. The memory of it left him wishing to stay in snake form forever and crawl away into some far away hole to hide the rest of his existence. 

“It’s no one’s fault, my dear. My only wish is that I could’ve understood how better to help you. When you had turned on yourself, I was struck with fear. I couldn’t move and it caused you injury.”

“I injured myssself. I wasss...bessside myself.” Crowley pressed his nose into Aziraphale’s neck, earning him a small stroke on the head with two of Aziraphale’s fingers. “Can you forgive me?”

“There’s nothing to forgive, dear one. I’m well aware that you weren’t all together with me. But may I ask...what were you dreaming? What upset you so?”

“Falling,” Crowley said, sliding over Aziraphale’s shoulder and nearly dropping to the floor. “And then you told me I was unworthy.”

“And tore your wing?”

“And tore my wing...”

“Well, I can assure you that wouldn’t happen. I’m a being of love and healing. Breaking things is not in my repertoire.”

“It’sss definitely in mine,” Crowley said, wrapping himself snugly around Aziraphale’s leg, inadvertently keeping the angel in place by the shelf where he had replaced his book.

“You’re too hard on yourself, Crowley. I do wish you would make an honest attempt at seeing things my way.”

Crowley raised himself up, his serpentine face inches from Aziraphale’s. When he flicked out his tongue, tasting cocoa on the air, it came dangerously close to the angel’s lips. 

“Are you trying to sssay I’m good?” He flicked out his tongue again, trying this time to touch Aziraphale’s mouth—mostly to see if he could and if the angel would notice. 

He certainly noticed and pulled back on reflex. 

“I’m under the impression if I agreed with you, you would wrap around my throat and choke me.”

“Perhapsssss...” Crowley hissed. He would be grinning ear-to-ear if he could. “You do look good enough to eat.”

“What a vile thing to say,” Aziraphale said, walking over to his chair and sitting down—almost crushing part of Crowley’s body in the process. 

“Are you angry with me?” Crowley asked, trying to keep a playful tone even though his question was anything but.

“Angry? No… Not at all. How could I be angry with you? You were frightened and in pain. What happened to you is going to leave scars. I can’t deny that. I can’t punish you for being distressed. I only wish I could’ve done more to stop you before you injured yourself. I...I hadn’t anticipated that you would harm yourself.”

Crowley didn’t know what to say for himself so he settled for crawling around Aziraphale’s arm and underneath his jacket and vest, burying his face in an in-seam pocket. 

“Can I help you!?” Aziraphale asked, squirming a bit. 

“You’re warm,” Crowley hissed. 

“I’ve told you before, you wouldn’t feel cold if you went back to your other form.”

“But I can be clossser thisss way,” Crowley dared crawling up Aziraphale’s back between him and the chair. 

“Any closer and you’ll be—oh never mind!” Aziraphale said, his cheeks turning the faintest shade of pink. 

“I am ssssorry, Angel,” Crowley said, setting his chin on Aziraphale’s shoulder again.

“It’s alright, my dear. And you do know we can have these conversations when you’re not a serpent also. You don’t need to hide from me.”

Crowley didn’t much care for that idea and kept the opinion to himself, deciding instead to slither down Aziraphale’s chest and begin spooling in his lap.

“Thank you for fixing it...” He offered, once he had formed a tight spiral, his face hidden in his own coils.

“I’m only relieved that I could. It took all I had to even attempt it. You’re very lucky.”

“I’m too lucky.” 

“Will you please stop hiding? I’d like to have tea with you,” Aziraphale said, shaking his legs to set the puddle that was Crowley off balance. The serpent groaned a very human-sounding groan and stretched out—crawling over to his throne and slowly morphing back into his other form. He materialized with a hand over his eyes, still not quite ready to face Aziraphale directly. “There now. That’s much better.”

“Easy for you to say,” Crowley muttered. 

“There’s nothing to be ashamed of. You know that, right?” 

“If you say so, Angel.”

“It was just a panic attack. Humans have them all the time.”

“Well, I’m not a human, now am I?”

“There’s no need to be defensive. I’m trying to—”

“Fix me? You shouldn’t have to carry my weight all the time. When have I ever returned the favor? When have I thought of something to save your life?”

“When you brought me and Adam to another plain—”

“Because _you_ gave me no other choice.”

“You still thought of it.”

“Because of _you._ I’m absolutely useless without you. I’m...a demon without you. I destroy everything I touch without you to fix it.” Crowley still had his hand over his eyes and could only hear Aziraphale let out a sigh and then get up to make tea.

“You haven’t destroyed me. In fact, I can think of multiple instances in which you’ve saved me. Did you forget about the church? Did you forget about Paris? There have been plenty of times you’ve saved me from myself, Crowley. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Your bonsai trees will start thinking you’re soft.”

“Not if they know what’s good for them,” Crowley said, snapping his head up to glare at the trees and the succulents. They had significantly wilted the month he and Aziraphale had spent in bed, but a few miracles and a lot of threats had corrected that. Empty threats, but threats nonetheless. Aziraphale wouldn’t let him torture any of them to death…

“You see now? It’s time to stop being silly.”

“You’re too good for me, Angel...” 

“Nonsense,” Aziraphale said as he readied the kettle. 

Crowley stayed in his seat, massaging his temples and listening to Aziraphale ready the tea. He felt himself getting lost in thought again, then noticed two white candles Aziraphale had sitting on his desk suddenly set themselves alight.

“Trying to set the mood, Angel?” Crowley asked. The air around him had begun flexing, a strange smell hitting his nose that he _really_ didn’t care for. It smelled, faintly, like Heaven.

“What’s that?”

Another candle lit itself and Crowley heard a loud clatter come from around the corner. 

“Aziraphale? What’s happening?” Crowley asked, fear filling every fiber of his being. All he could smell now was Heaven. It was as if the Almighty were in the room with him and all he wanted was to turn serpent and hide, but he couldn’t move. He was petrified in his seat, his hidden wings starting to burn with the agony of a million breaks in their bones. “A-Aziraphale?” 

The angel burst into the room, hastily pushing aside the carpet that Crowley had fallen onto the night he had been sent rocketing back down from his torture Above. Beneath it was a large symbol, a heavenly beacon that made Crowley’s eyes burn just to look at. 

Once the carpet was moved, Aziraphale began to move the candles one by one until the circle was complete.

“I’m so sorry, my dear. It’s… It’s the Metatron. I-I have to take this call.”

“No—No, of course. Can’t expect you to hang up on the Almighty,” Crowley said, trying to force on a veil of humor through his fear. He kept trying to get his legs to stand him up and move him, but they remained petrified.

Maybe that was part of the call… Maybe the Almighty had him pinned. 

There was no doubt in his mind that this call was in regards to him. 

Once the ritual had been completed, Aziraphale came to stand before it, placing himself between the glowing beam of light that burst forth from it and Crowley. 

“Aziraphale,” spoke the man who appeared before them. “You are in the presence of the Metatron.”

“Ah—Yes. Yes, I see. A-And for what… Er—What honor do I receive your...your message?” Aziraphale must’ve felt as nervous as Crowley. He was wringing his hands and shifting his weight hastily back and forth. His wings—his beautiful, tattered and mangled wings—had unfurled behind him and he didn’t seem to notice.

“To speak to the Metatron is to speak to the Almighty.”

“Yes. I-I am aware,” Aziraphale said, smiling nervously and wringing his hands more fervently. 

“A great transgression has been made against you and the fallen angel Crawly.”

“Crowley? Oh—Oh, yes,” Aziraphale said, blanching as he realized he’d just corrected the messenger of God. 

“Keep it up, Angel. You’re doing wonderful,” Crowley said, in his own way trying to deflect any ill sentiments the Metatron might have toward himself.

“Bear witness, Principality Aziraphale and Felled Angel Crawley, as I decree three archangels have fallen for their crimes.”

“Three angels have fallen?” Aziraphale said, looking paler by the second. Crowley was finally able to move in his seat, wondering if it would be advisable to step forward. There was no doubt in his mind that the beam of light would discorporate him in an instant with its holy radiance, but he couldn’t just stand by and watch as Aziraphale fell to the floor, could he? 

“To enact revenge without the commendation of the Lord is to enact revenge on the Lord,” continued the Metatron as if Aziraphale had not spoken. “It is the Lord’s to avenge; the Lord will repay.”

“And how…”

“How exactly is the Lord intending to repay?” Crowley asked, forcing himself up from his seat and stepping forward. He wanted to stand between the beam of light and Aziraphale, but couldn’t quite muster the courage. His eyes burned just looking at the disembodied face before him.

“Crowley, please,” Aziraphale whispered, ducking his chin down in reverence and grabbing Crowley by the hand. “Let me handle this. You mustn’t create animosity between yourself and the Almighty.”

“With all do respect, Angel, I was told to bear witness. I’m involved as much as you.”

“Felled Angel Crawley!” The Metatron spoke with such force that Aziraphale nearly fell to his knees. He would have, surely, if Crowley hadn’t grabbed him and stopped him—thinking the action was a mistake when in reality the angel was trying to bow before the Almighty, as was his duty.

“Yes, hi. That’s me,” Crowley said, not letting go of Aziraphale’s hand no matter how hard the angel fought against him. 

“Hatred stirs up conflict,” declared the Metatron.

“Ah, yes. I see,” Crowley said.

“Crowley, please! Show respect,” Aziraphale whispered harshly. 

“But it is avowed by our Lord God that love covers over all wrongs,” stated the Metatron, undaunted. “For the fallen to allow in the light and grace of love, a pure love, untainted, is a gift before God. To face punishment for unsullied affections is an abomination before the Lord. Therefore, those responsible must face their judgment. May it be remembered that everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.”

“Love—yes!” Shouted Aziraphale, voice trembling a bit with his fear. “There is love here. A-A pure love! Just as you had mentioned. Absolutely unsullied.”

“A blessing is to be bestowed upon the Fallen, Crawley, and the Angel Aziraphale.”

“A blessing?” Aziraphale asked, looking to Crowley as if he would have an answer. The demon had to bite back a sassy remark, feeling now was not the best of times to attempt a joke. 

“Be fruitful,” stated the Metatron, “and multiply. This is the will of the Lord.”

“Fruitful?” Aziraphale asked, looking at first confused and then terribly pleased with himself. He turned to Crowley with a sheepish grin, his eyes lighting up in their own subtle was as he gently touched Crowley’s arm. “Be fruitful!” He whispered.

Crowley, meanwhile, did not echo the same cheer as the angel. He was still caught up in the mixed messages the Metatron was sending—and his discouragement growing as the messenger of God began fading away, snuffing out the candles as it went.

“Fruit trees!” Crowley suddenly exclaimed, pulling away from Aziraphale and returning to his throne. “The Lord wants us to buy fruit trees. Yes—That’s what the shop needs. Maybe a lime tree… Or a pomegranate. No apples. Certainly not…”

“Crowley?” Aziraphale was following after him, still sounding as if he were on cloud nine. Why wouldn’t he be? As far as he was concerned, his cruel boss had just been sentenced to eternity in Hell and the Lord had blessed his union with a demon. He didn’t realize that that was a punishment in and of itself.

Hell now had three more agents determined to cause Crowley’s downfall and Aziraphale would be too distracted trying to find ways to “multiply” to see it coming.

“I think we ought to open a greenhouse. We’ll sell the best fruit trees in the world. Yes—Yes, fruit trees. We shall be fruitful.”

“Crowley!” 

Crowley finally turned to look at him, his body falling limp in shock as he regarded Aziraphale’s wings—now fuller and thicker than ever before. He seemed to have twice as many feathers as before, with layers so thick it could appear to be three wings in one. 

“Do you know what this means?” Aziraphale was asking, not meaning his wings even though that was all Crowley could focus upon. God’s forgiveness was so evident… Forgiveness. He was referred to as Felled, but it was the Almighty who had repaired his wings. They had both been tested by Aziraphale’s sacrifice, and in finding that they did not turn upon one another out of jealousy or turn a blind eye to one another’s pain, the Almighty had blessed Aziraphale with the most lustrous and glorious wings of any angel Crowley had ever seen.

All he wanted to do was run his fingers through them, preen them even though they were impeccable and fresh.

“That…you’re an archangel?” Crowley asked dumbly, staring at the wings. He wanted to so badly to touch them, to bask in their radiance. What would it feel like to run the tips of those white feathers against his scales. 

“No! Heaven’s no… I certainly hope not. You do think the Metatron would’ve informed me of that?”

“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” Crowley said, tearing his eyes away from the wings in order to look at the heavenly symbol left on the floor.

“We’ve been _blessed,_ Crowley. The Almighty… Our Lord God approves of our union! We are blessed in the eyes of God!” 

Oh, for Satan’s sake, the angel was crying he was so happy.

“And what ought we do with that?” Crowley asked, trying to settled into his chair in a way that looked more laid back and less terrified. 

“Be fruitful!” Aziraphale said, grinning because he had no idea what he was actually saying. “And multiply!”

“Ah—yes! Fruit trees. We need to go to a greenhouse.”

“That’s _not_ what was meant!”

“I want citrus. Is citrus fine with you, Angel?”

“Crowley, be serious!”

May it be said that the denial from the demon and the exasperation from the angel lasted another millennia—that the argument extended for the entire expanse of time while Crowley ran the world’s greatest greenhouse selling the most luxurious (and terrified) of citrus trees. May it be said that Aziraphale was none the wiser about scripture and did not know the extent of the Lord’s divine gift and the continuation of Her ineffable plan.

It may be said, but it would be wrong. It was hardly a year’s time before a forceful knock fell upon the bookshop door. Crowley, startled and brought back to dark memories, hissed and turned serpent—falling into a pile on the floor while Aziraphale both scolded and comforted him. When the door was opened, it was an international deliveries driver outside, holding in one hand a clipboard with a worn pen and in the other a wicker basket. 

“Don’t ssssign anything!” The serpent may or may not have hissed while wrapping around one of his potted orange trees.

The angel, pretending not to hear a word, signed his name away and reached for the basket, only to have it held away. 

“Two signatures required on this one,” the driver said, seeming just as baffled as Aziraphale. 

Crowley hissed, long and hard, and spat venom. When his threats earned him no pity and did not force his partner to comply with his wishes, Crowley relented and turned back into a man. He glowered at the driver and the clipboard, and kept flicking out his forked tongue the entire time he signed his name. 

Aziraphale took the basket with a smile and waved the driver off while Crowley slammed the door. 

“Don’t sssign for thingsss you didn’t order,” Crowley hissed, turning back into a serpent in order to crawl up his angel’s leg and perch his chin on his shoulder, staring down at the closed basket. His tail—which had, one night nearly a year ago, returned to its full length—wrapped around Aziraphale’s waist and squeezed gently. “Are you going to open it?”

“Curious now, are you?” Aziraphale asked, smiling while reaching down to flip open the basket. “Oh! Oh, Heaven… Oh, Heaven, bless us!” He almost fell to his knees, but caught himself when he realized the weight of what he was holding.

“Ah… Ssso it’sss a girl,” the serpent noted before pressing his nose into Aziraphale’s neck. His heart felt full—of fear, of hope, of an indescribable sensation of joy he hadn’t felt in over six-thousand years when a beautiful angel held a stunningly white wing over his head during the first storm. 

“Multiply,” Aziraphale said, dumbly, and then started to cry while the demon responsible for the Earth’s first human birth—and now the first inhuman one—chuckled in his ear. 

“It ssseemsss I wasss wrong about the fruit treesss.” 

“They’re truly awful,” the angel sobbed. “Taking over my shop.”

“Jussst imagine what a child will do. Touching all your booksss...”

“It’ll be like having two of you running about.” And so, still weeping despite the demon’s best attempts to humor him, the angel may have pulled the infant—equal parts demon and angel—from the basket and held it in his arms while a serpent curved around to support her tiny head. 

The demon, still mourning the inevitable loss of his fruit trees, may have wept as well—for an all together different reason—had he been in a form able to produce tears. 

Not that he would have ever admitted so. He didn’t have to, for the angel was already fully aware and unashamed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for coming on this journey with me! This story was so fun to write and I really hope you enjoyed the ending! Crowley is a little too...indulgent to ever be forgiven enough to be an angel, but he can be blessed in his own way! I kind of have an idea of where the story would go if I were to continue it with a sequel, but I know O/Cs can make some readers lose interest. What do you guys think??
> 
> Edit: You guys are amazing and so, so supportive! I couldn't ask for better readers and my heart is so full! I want to give a shout out to the Shippers Guide to the Galaxy for referencing my work in her video and bringing so many great people my way! I almost didn't write this story (only did at the urging of my good friend!) and you all have made me so happy I did! I never could've dreamed it would be so well recieved that I could follow it up with a sequel and I hope to see some of you over at Part Two: The Original Sin.
> 
> Thank you all so much! ❤


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